Search

Objectives: To explore perceived benefits, barriers, and cues to action of yoga practice among adults. Methods: Focus groups were conducted with persons who had never practiced yoga, practitioners of one year or less, and practitioners for more than one year. The Health Belief Model was the theoretical foundation of inquiry. Results: All participants acknowledged a variety of benefits of yoga. Barriers outweighed benefits among persons who had never practiced despite knowledge of benefits. Positive experiences with yoga and yoga instructors facilitated practice. Conclusions: Newly identified benefits and barriers indicate the need for quantitative research and behavioral trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To design a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess perceived attributes of technology-based health education innovations. Methods: College students in 12 personal health courses reviewed a prototype eHealth intervention using a 30-item instrument based upon diffusion theory's perceived attributes of an innovation. Results: Principal components analysis found 5 factors accounted for 44.4% of the variance: 29.0% (relative advantage), 9.6% (simplicity), 6.5% (trialability), 5.0% (observability), and 4.4% (translatability). Internal consistency reliability ranged from .66 to .91 for the 5 factors. Conclusion: The instrument can help eHealth developers determine and improve the adoption potential of their applications throughout the development cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE: To discuss how health behavior researchers can use the Internet to study and intervene on health behavior. METHODS: Describe how the Internet is increasingly able to offer a viable medium for health behavior intervention and the challenges and opportunities inherent in conducting online interventions and research. RESULTS: The challenges of eHealth include coping with the additional demands of development, finding ways to reach 'hard-to-reach' audiences, and maintaining privacy and security while monitoring participant use. CONCLUSIONS: Health behavior researchers and interventionists need to learn to apply eHealth tools to extend their ability to study and influence health behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]