Shauna Burke
Shauna M. Burke is a professor in the School of Health Studies at Western University in Ontario, working on health behaviour, childhood obesity and group dynamics in physical activity. She is a co-author of the 2006 review that gives the strongest evidence on the other side of the group-versus-individual question, and a co-author twenty years later on the 2026 meta-analysis that found the comparison null. She appears on this site as the other side of that question, and deliberately without numbers.
Who they are
The 2006 work distinguished true groups, run deliberately on group-dynamics principles, from people who merely exercise at the same time and place. It reported that true groups outperformed individual approaches and produced the highest adherence rates of the contexts compared. That distinction is the one article 10 is built on, and it arrived twenty years before the null result that made it necessary.
No effect size from that paper is printed here. The full text could not be opened during the September 2026 verification pass, so the true-group finding is reported qualitatively and at one remove, and the numbers stay off the page until somebody reads them off the paper. The vault carries the flag numbers-unverified against it. This is separate from the name, which was confirmed in the same pass: the "S. M. Burke" on the 2006 meta-analysis, on the cohesion-in-exercise-groups overview and on the 2026 Kritz paper is the same person.
Key papers
Burke, S. M., Carron, A. V., Eys, M. A., Ntoumanis, N., & Estabrooks, P. A. (2006). "Group versus individual approach? A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity", Sport and Exercise Psychology Review, 2(1), 19 to 35. True groups outperformed individual approaches and produced the highest adherence rates of the contexts compared. Effect sizes unverified and not printed.
Kritz, M., Riddell, H., Olsen, D., Harden, S. M., Burke, S. M., Ntoumanis, N., & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C. (2026). Nature Human Behaviour, 10(6), 1109 to 1121. Co-author. Physical activity outcomes, n = 22,042, g = 0.086, 95 per cent CI −0.061 to 0.233, p = 0.249.
Key ideas
The form of the group is the variable, not the presence of other people. A group run on group-dynamics principles is a different intervention from a scheduled class, and the 2006 review is the earliest clear statement of that in this literature.
Being on both papers is the useful biographical fact. The same researcher supplies the affirmative case and, two decades later, co-authors the null. Nothing in the record suggests she ever held that group delivery as such was the effective ingredient.
Both sides, then the line. Her 2006 review is the strongest evidence that groups can beat individual approaches. The 2026 meta-analysis is larger, newer and directly on the comparison, and finds nothing for group delivery as a category. We land with the 2026 result on the category question and with her 2006 distinction on what to do about it, which is not a compromise so much as the two papers answering different questions.
A finding reported at one remove is still worth reporting. It is not worth quantifying.
Concepts on this site
Group Identification, the modern name for what a true group supplies
Exercise Adherence, the outcome in both papers
Entitativity, what makes a group a group rather than a queue
Sources
- Burke, S. M., et al. (2006). Sport and Exercise Psychology Review, 2(1), 19 to 35. Numbers unverified, full text not opened.
- Kritz, M., et al. (2026). Nature Human Behaviour, 10(6), 1109 to 1121.
- Vault verification record, 2026-09-11. Given name and affiliation confirmed, School of Health Studies, Western University. The unverified-numbers flag on the 2006 paper stands and is the reason no effect size appears above.