Computerized tailored physical activity reports. A randomized controlled trial.

<bold>Background: </bold>Computerized, tailored interventions have the potential to be a cost-effective means to assist a wide variety of individuals with behavior change. This study examined the effect of computerized tailored physical activity reports on primary care patients' physical activity at 6 months.<bold>Design: </bold>Two-group randomized clinical trial with physicians as the unit of randomization. Patients were placed in the intervention (n=187) or control group (n=207) based on their physician's assignment.<bold>Setting/participants: </bold>Primary care physicians (n=22) and their adult patients (n=394) from Philadelphia PA. The study and analyses were conducted from 2004 to 2010.<bold>Intervention: </bold>The intervention group completed physical activity surveys at baseline, 1, 3, and 6 months. Based on their responses, participants received four feedback reports at each time point. The reports aimed to motivate participants to increase physical activity, personalized to participants' needs; they also included an activity prescription. The control group received identical procedures, except that they received general reports on preventive screening based on their responses to preventive screening questions.<bold>Main Outcome Measures: </bold>Minutes of physical activity measured by the 7-Day Physical Activity Recall interview at 6 months.<bold>Results: </bold>Participants were 69% female, 59% African-American, and had diverse educational and income levels; the retention rate was 89.6%. After adjusting for baseline levels of activity and gender, there were no differences in physical activity at 6 months. The intervention group increased their total physical activity by a mean of 139 minutes; the control group had a mean increase of 109 minutes (p=0.45).<bold>Conclusions: </bold>Although physical activity increased within both groups, computerized tailored physical activity reports did not significantly increase physical activity between groups at 6 months among ethnically and socioeconomically diverse adults in primary care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]