Abstract
Forty smokers and 47 overweight individuals were recruited for a home correspondence program for either smoking cessation or weight loss. Participants were assigned to one of four programs for changing their respective health behaviors: (1) a home correspondence program conducted entirely by mail, (2) the mail program with supplemental financial contigency contracts tied to completion of written homework, (3) the correspondence program supplemented both by homework contracts and by regular calls to a telephone answering system, and (4) a standard behavioral group program which acted as a comparison condition. Results showed that all three correspondence approaches produced significant changes in health behaviors equal to the changes experienced by participants in the standard group program. The implication of these findings for development of low cost programs for disease prevention are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 57-63 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Addictive Behaviors |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1982 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by grant No. HL 14174 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. *Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert W. Jeffery, Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene, School of Public Health, 61 I Beacon St., S.E., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455.