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EHealth behaviour change interventions that help participants to adhere to professional physical activity recommendations can help to prevent future events of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Therefore, identifying user groups of such interventions based on stages of health behaviour change is of great importance to provide tailored content to users instead of one-size-fits-all approaches. Our study used Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify underlying classes of users of an eHealth behaviour change intervention based on stages of change and associated variables. We compared participants' self-allocated stage with their latent class stage membership to display the correlation and mean differences between the two approaches. This was done by analysing baseline data of N = 310 people interested in reducing their CVD risk. LCA identified a three-class solution: (non-)intenders (19.4%), non-habituated actors (43.2%) and habituated actors (37.4%). The interrelation between self-allocated and latent class stage membership was moderate ( ρ (308) = .49, p  < .001). Significant mean differences for (non-)intenders and non-habituated actors were found in social-cognitive variables. Results showed that self-allocated stage outcomes represent a pseudo stage model - linear trends can be reported for stage-associated social-cognitive variables. The study provides information on the validity of stage measures, which can inform future interventions.

Compensatory health beliefs (the beliefs that an unhealthy behaviour can be compensated by a healthy behaviour) can interfere with adherence to fruit and vegetable consumption recommendations. Fruit and vegetable consumption, social cognitive variables and compensatory health beliefs were investigated via self-report at baseline (T0) and 8-week follow-up (T1) in N = 790 participants. Self-efficacy predicted fruit and vegetable consumption intentions. Planning mediated between intentions and T1 fruit and vegetable consumption. Compensatory health beliefs negatively predicted intentions at low self-efficacy levels only. The results propose the use of self-efficacy interventions to diminish the negative effects of compensatory health beliefs when forming fruit and vegetable consumption intentions and foster planning to translate intentions into behaviour.

Background: Cardiac rehabilitation programs aim to improve health status and to decrease the risk of further cardiac events. Persons undergoing rehabilitation often have difficulties transferring the learned health behaviors into their daily routine after returning home and maybe to work. This includes physical activity as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. Computer-based tailored interventions have been shown to be effective in increasing physical activity as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. The aim of this study is, to support people in transferring these two learned behavior changes and their antecedents into their daily life after cardiac rehabilitation., Methods: The study will have a randomized controlled design and will be conducted among German and Dutch people who participated in cardiac rehabilitation. The study will consist of one intervention group which will be compared to a waiting list control group. During the eight week duration of the intervention, participants will be invited to participate in the online after-care program once per week. The intervention encourages participants to define individual health behavior goals as well as action, and coping plans to reach these self-determined goals. The effectiveness of the program will be compared between the intervention condition and the control group in terms of behavior change, antecedents of behavior change (e.g., self-efficacy), ability to return to work and increased well-being. Further, subgroup-differences will be assessed including differences between the two countries, socioeconomic inequalities and across age groups., Discussion: The present study will make a contribution to understanding how such an online-based tailored interventions enables study participants to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Implications can include how such an online program could enrich cardiac rehabilitation aftercare further., Trial Registration: NTR 3706, NCT01909349.