Abstract
Goal-setting is commonly used in behavior change applications for physical activity. However, for goals to be effective, they need to be tailored to a user’s situation (e.g., motivation, progress). One way to obtain such goals is a collaborative process in which a healthcare professional and client set a goal together, thus making use of the professional’s expertise and the client’s knowledge about their own situation. As healthcare professionals are not always available, we created a dialog with the virtual coach Steph to collaboratively set daily step goals. Since judgments in human decision-making processes are adjusted based on the starting point or anchor, the first step goal proposal Steph makes is likely to influence the user’s final goal and self-efficacy. Situational factors impacting physical activity (e.g., motivation, self-efficacy, available time) or how users process information (e.g., mood) may determine which initial proposals are most effective in getting users to reach their underlying previous activity-based recommended step goals. Using data from 117 people interacting with Steph for up to five days, we designed a reinforcement learning algorithm that considers users’ current and future situations when choosing an initial step goal proposal. Our simulations show that initial step goal proposals matter: choosing optimal ones based on this algorithm could make it more likely that people move to a situation with high motivation, high self-efficacy, and a favorable daily context. Then, they are more likely to achieve, but also to overachieve, their underlying recommended step goals. Our dataset is publicly available.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 19th International Conference, PERSUASIVE 2024, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, April 10–12, 2024, Proceedings |
Pages | 100-115 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Keywords
- Physical activity
- Behavior change
- Reinforcement learning
- Conversational agent
- Goal-setting
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Collaboratively Setting Daily Step Goals with a Virtual Coach: Using Reinforcement Learning to Personalize Initial Proposals - Data and Analysis Code
Dierikx, M. (Creator), Albers, N. (Creator), Scheltinga, B. (Creator) & Brinkman, W. P. (Creator), TU Delft - 4TU.ResearchData, 23 Jan 2024
DOI: 10.4121/53f2d238-77fc-4045-89a9-fb7fa2871f1d
Dataset/Software: Dataset