Physical Activity InterventionsWorksite physical activity interventions
Section snippets
Methods
Seventy-three studies published from 1972 through August 1, 1997, were located by searches of literature published in the English language using MEDLINE, PSYCHINFO, CURRENT CONTENTS, and BIOSIS, computer searches with worksite, corporate, fitness, exercise, adherence, physical activity, intervention, health education, and behavior modification as key words. Searches were supplemented by bibliographies from the articles retrieved and by reference lists provided by expert colleagues.
Criteria for
Results
A stem-and-leaf display of the 45 effects is presented in Figure 1. The distribution of effects was positively skewed (g1 = 1.56, P < 0.0001) and leptokurtic (g2 = 2.80, P < 0.0001). The modal effect was between 0.00 to 0.10. The mean (95% CI) value of r was 0.11 (−0.20 to 0.40). Expressed as a binomial effect size,10 the effect is equivalent to increasing success rates from an expected rate of 50% without intervention to 56% after an intervention. This is conventionally categorized75 as a
Discussion
Results from our quantitative synthesis of the literature indicate that the typical worksite intervention for increasing physical activity has yielded a small positive effect, which is not statistically different from zero. These findings are in agreement with an independently conducted quantitative analysis76 involving a smaller sample of effects (N = 33), in which the mean effect r was 0.17 (95% CI, −0.19 to 0.48). Our findings are more clear than those from a recent summary that relied on a
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