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. 2022 Mar 16;14(6):1258.
doi: 10.3390/nu14061258.

The Effectiveness of Web-Based Interventions to Promote Health Behaviour Change in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Daniela de Sousa  1   2 , Adriana Fogel  1   2 , José Azevedo  1   2   3 , Patrícia Padrão  1   2   4
Affiliations

The Effectiveness of Web-Based Interventions to Promote Health Behaviour Change in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Daniela de Sousa et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Although web-based interventions are attractive to researchers and users, the evidence about their effectiveness in the promotion of health behaviour change is still limited. Our aim was to review the effectiveness of web-based interventions used in health behavioural change in adolescents regarding physical activity, eating habits, tobacco and alcohol use, sexual behaviour, and quality of sleep. Studies published from 2016 till the search was run (May-to-June 2021) were included if they were experimental or quasi-experimental studies, pre-post-test studies, clinical trials, or randomized controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness of web-based intervention in promoting behaviour change in adolescents regarding those health behaviours. The risk of bias assessment was performed by using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP)-Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Fourteen studies were included. Most were in a school setting, non-probabilistic and relatively small samples. All had a short length of follow-up and were theory driven. Thirteen showed significant positive findings to support web-based interventions' effectiveness in promoting health behaviour change among adolescents but were classified as low evidence quality. Although this review shows that web-based interventions may contribute to health behaviour change among adolescents, these findings rely on low-quality evidence, so it is urgent to test these interventions in larger controlled trials with long-term maintenance.

Keywords: adolescents; behaviour change; health behaviour; systematic review; web-based intervention.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Self-elaborated graph of trends by year of publication for search terms “health AND web-based intervention” from PubMed/MEDLINE data on 26 August 2021.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Study Flow Diagram adapted from: [18]. For more information, visit: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ (accessed on 29 January 2022).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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