Project proposal on gamification in nutritional behavior change

However, persuading children and adolescents to adopt new eating behaviors is a unique developmental challenge. The increased usage of smartphone among children and adolescents in the digital era can be applied in the society positively. Mobile technologies are widely adopted at the average age of ten years old globally and so mobile devices offer a convenient platform for delivering effective health information and interventions. There is, therefore, a need for a new tool that could help teach children how to create healthy habits. This research project, therefore, aimed to explore the use of gamification in existing nutritional education phone-based apps and to introduce a systematic review approach to know which guideline a nutritional app would have to be designed with in order to effectively engage and promote long term sustainable nutrition behavior in children and adolescents.

Young people often fail to make optimal nutritional decisions appropriately, due to personal preferences, lack of knowledge, and previously established behavioral patterns. However, with increased usage of smartphone among children and adolescents in the digital era scientist can use it as an opportunity to deliver nutritional and health information close to children and adolescents. Mobile technologies are widely adopted at the average age of ten years old globally and so mobile devices offer a convenient platform for delivering effective health information and interventions. In most cases, children focus on playing games when they are with their phones hence may not go to the internet and search for any health-related information. There is, therefore, a need for a new tool that could help teach children how to create healthy habits.

However, there is a challenge in persuading children and adolescents to adopt new eating behaviors due to unique personal preferences, lack of knowledge, and previously established behavioral patterns. However, due to an increased usage of smartphone in the current world among young people can be used as an opportunity to create awareness on health among adolescent. According to Edwards et al. (2016), the number of smartphones users as of 2016 were 2 billion globally and research shows that by 2018 0. 3 of the global population will be using a smartphone. Statement of the Research Problem Due to lack of knowledge, and previously established behavioral patterns, young people often fail to make optimal nutritional decisions appropriately. This has increased health problem like overweight and obesity among children and adolescents.

Therefore, there is a need to innovate phone based Apps to bring health information near adolescents who use smarts for gaming. Research objectives This research project aimed at; i. Determining the mechanisms of gamification that can effectively generate long term behavior change in children and young adults. One anticipated issue with this study was to be the limited and finite number of cases that could lead to generalizing and overestimating the efficacy of individual d game design elements. Also, the definition of “long term habit” was subjective and did not use a systematic duration. In fact, not all intervention studies included similar methods and results, thus preventing the establishment of effective guidelines. Systematic literature review This systematic review aimed at identifying which guideline a nutritional app would have to be designed with in order to effectively engage and promote long term sustainable nutrition behavior in children and adolescents.

The systematic review was conducted to answer the formulated questions. The database that provided more documents was Google Scholar (n=30) and IEEE provided (n=20). However, due to duplicated records from Google Scholar, we limited the internet database to Google Scholar. At the end of the exercise we remained with 12 articles. Manual screening After collecting the documents we screened them through eligibility criteria. After screening only 25 articles remained. Virtual avatars, avafeed, gaming Virtual Avatars, gaming, social media, avafeed Integrating gaming into mobile-phone based nutritional apps. Conference paper Chau et al. 2018 This article identifies programs that utilize social media to promote nutrition. The authors examined the features and content of these interventions then evaluated the evidence of the application of such platforms. Gamification, social media Gaming, social media Communication, education, and tailoring Journal article Wickham.

A systematic review was conducted in 6 databases and it was concluded that video games can improve health outcomes, especially in the areas of physical therapy and psychological therapy. Video games, psychological therapy, diet, physical therapy. Video games and gamification Journal article DeSmet et al. 2014 This article investigated the overall effectiveness of serious digital games on promoting healthy lifestyle outcomes by contacting a meta-analysis of 54 serious digital game studies for a healthy lifestyle. It was found that there is a small positive effect of serious games on healthy lifestyles. Gamification, health, behavior change, computer games Gamification, experimental game, interactive game, computer games. Persuasion, communication Editorial Discussion One of the most common online activity among children is social media (Pollak et al. An estimated 90% of U.

S young people were using social media sites and more than 50% were doing this daily (Pollak et al. It is estimated that a population of one billion teenagers are Facebook users, 30% of teenagers at an age of 18-24 are Twitter users (Cugelman. Byrne et al. (2010) in response to their photos of their breakfast are more likely to eat more breakfast as compared to those without such pets (Cugelman. These example findings show that virtual avatars are potential in enhancing positive health behavior change. Gaming is incorporated into mobile phone-based apps where they collect coins for choosing healthy food and from which they can redeem virtual prizes. A computer algorithm presents a difficult choice as the user’s selected healthier food. Self-efficacy and social norms play a major role in every stage of behavior change.

Gamification has shown to be potential in making habitual changes such as nutritional behavior. Research has shown that gamification can be designed to factor a certain group of people and their social norm information. The application gaming and virtual avatar in decision making on the food to feed motivate you as well as increasing self-efficacy beliefs. This is a promising approach to help in reducing the increased childhood obesity in society while catering their interests through smartphone usage which in the digital era is for everyone. , Pollack, J. P. , Gonzales, A. , Retelny, D. , Lee, T. , Thompson, D. , Crombez, G. & Vandebosch, H. A meta-analysis of serious digital games for healthy lifestyle promotion.  Preventive medicine, 69, 95-107.  BMJ open, 6(10), e012447. Guarneri, M. R. , & Perego, P.