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Abstract
Previous research has shown that providing family engagement and social support play important roles in weight management success, helping to achieve long-term lifestyle changes. Traditionally, the support provided by online health communities is primarily targeted at individuals and does not involve their families. SOFA (SOcial FAmilies), a novel approach for engaging, motivating, and persuading families to adopt a healthy lifestyle, is proposed. SOFA is an online social network for families coupled with a repository of health-related educational content. This article reports the results of a live user study aimed at investigating how user profile representation and system-assigned tasks influence users engagement with the system and change their attitude toward a healthy lifestyle. The results show that representing family members as individuals increases the number of active members per family as well as their retention, contribution to, and engagement with the network. The results also show that family-based social networks positively change the attitude of family members toward a healthy lifestyle.
Notes
This research is jointly funded by the Australian Government through the Intelligent Island Program and CSIRO Preventative Health Flagship. The Intelligent Island Program is administered by the Tasmanian Department of Economic Development, Tourism, and the Arts. We thank Dipak Bhandari, Gilly Hendrie, Nathalie Colineau, Cecile Paris, Manny Noakes, Holger Neuhaus, and Phil Mohr for their contribution to this research. We also acknowledge Penguin Group (Australia) and Better Health Channel for permission to use their data in our studies.