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Towards More Interactive Stress-Related Self-monitoring Tools to Improve Quality of Life

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Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018) (IEA 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 818))

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Abstract

Self-monitoring with diaries is one way to identify stress causing events and the respective personal reactions. Considering the broad distribution of smartphones over the past decade, an interactive stress diary application (app) was developed. Diary entries are linked to changes in the appearance of an avatar to support regular usage behavior through vicarious reinforcement.

To investigate the effectiveness of this interactive feature on actual user behavior, 55 young adults randomly received one of two versions of the self-monitoring app, one with vicarious reinforcement (experimental group) and one with no changes in the avatar (control group). After a four week test interval, participants were asked for feedback. Moreover, participants filled out standardized psychometric questionnaires measuring the subjective stress level, occurrence of daily hassles, quality of sleep, and physical symptoms.

Diary entries were correlated with the scores of the respective standardized psychometric questionnaires, indicating convergent validity of the diary categories. A significant increase of missing diary entries over time was found for the control group only. In line with this finding, participants of the experimental group stated that watching the avatar’s change over time was fun. These results are a first step towards more interactive stress-related self-monitoring tools to improve quality of life.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks are due to Ann-Kathrin Beck, Nesibe Elibol and Stefanie Scülfort for supporting the data collection. The junior research group wearHEALTH is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF, reference number: 16SV7115).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AG wearHEALTH, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 67663, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Corinna A. Christmann, Gregor Zolynski, Alexandra Hoffmann & Gabriele Bleser

Authors
  1. Corinna A. Christmann
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  2. Gregor Zolynski
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  3. Alexandra Hoffmann
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  4. Gabriele Bleser
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandra Hoffmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Republic of San Marino, San Marino, San Marino

    Sebastiano Bagnara

  2. Centre for Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety, Tuscany Region, Florence, Italy

    Riccardo Tartaglia

  3. Centre for Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety, Tuscany Region, Florence, Italy

    Sara Albolino

  4. Fraunhofer FKIE, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Thomas Alexander

  5. International Ergonomics Association, Tokyo, Japan

    Yushi Fujita

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Christmann, C.A., Zolynski, G., Hoffmann, A., Bleser, G. (2019). Towards More Interactive Stress-Related Self-monitoring Tools to Improve Quality of Life. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 818. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96098-2_17

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