EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CLIENT-SET VERSUS COACH-SET GOALS IN THE CONTEXT OF A HEALTH-COACHING INTERVENTION FOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Author

J. Logan Gibson, University of the PacificFollow

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Matthew P. Normand

First Committee Member

Carolynn Kohn

Second Committee Member

Corey Stocco

Abstract

Health coaching is a relatively new integrated health role in which practitioners use a combination of behavioral interventions to evoke health-related behavior changes; however, there is a lack of valid evidence to support health-based claims. We investigated the effect of an approximation of a health coaching intervention on three college students' number of steps per day. We provided participants with weekly telehealth coaching sessions focused on goal-setting and feedback and used Fitbits to track the results. We used a multiple baseline across participants design to compare daily steps across four phases; self-monitoring, self-monitoring with experimenter-set goals and feedback, self-monitoring with participant-set goals and feedback, and finally, a choice phase in which participants could continue to set their own goals or have the experimenter set goals for them. All experimenter-set goals were selected using a weekly percentile schedule. In aggregate, all participants took more steps in the goal-setting phases than during the self-monitoring only phase. However, there was no notable difference between self-set goals and experimenter-set goals. When offered, all participants chose to continue the intervention for an additional one to two weeks.

Pages

83

Recommended Citation

Gibson, J. Logan. (2022). EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CLIENT-SET VERSUS COACH-SET GOALS IN THE CONTEXT OF A HEALTH-COACHING INTERVENTION FOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. University of the Pacific, Thesis. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/3820