Promoting Men's Health With the "Don't Change Much" e-Program

Abstract

Men's e-health promotion programs can offer end-user anonymity and autonomy that provide avenues for supporting positive health behavior change. The twofold purpose of the current study was to use a benchmark cohort as a reference group to: (1) describe associations between men's usage levels of the e-health program Don't Change Much (DCM) and their recent and intended health behavior changes, and (2) report an exploratory analysis of the moderating effects of demographic variables on the associations between DCM users and their recent and intended health behavior changes. Based on self-report, DCM users were classified into limited (n = 613, 34.7%), low (n = 826, 46.8%), and high (n = 327, 18.5%) exposure groups. Compared with the benchmark cohort, DCM high-exposure respondents had significantly increased odds for eight of the nine recent behavior changes, with the largest effect size observed for "Made an effort to sit less and walk more" (odds ratio [OR] 2.996, 95% CI [2.347, 3.826]). Eight of the nine intended health behavior changes in the DCM high-exposure group had significantly increased odds compared to the benchmark cohort, with "Reduce stress level" (OR 3.428, 95% CI [2.643, 4.447]) having the largest effect size. Significantly greater total numbers of recent (F(12, 2850) = 29.32; p = .001; R² = .086) and intended health behavior changes (F(12, 2850) = 34.59; p = .001; R² = 0.100) were observed among high exposure respondents while adjusting for demographics. Younger age, being employed, and household income <$120,000 had an enhancing moderator effect on DCM users' number of intended behavior changes.

Keywords: Men’s health behaviors; health behavior change; men’s e-health; men’s health promotion.