Group versus individual approach? A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of interventions to promote physical activity
Burke and colleagues compared the settings in which physical activity programmes are delivered, pooling forty-four studies and more than two hundred comparisons across five outcomes: whether people kept going, social interaction, quality of life, and physiological and functional effects. Four settings were compared: exercising at home with no contact from anyone, at home with some contact from a researcher or health professional, in a standard exercise class, and in a class deliberately built on group-dynamics principles to make the group cohesive. One ordering appeared across nearly every outcome. The deliberately built group beat the standard class. The standard class was no better than exercising at home with contact. And exercising at home with contact beat exercising at home alone. The practical reading is that contact with another person is doing much of the work, and that simply putting people in a room together adds little unless the group is built. A later and larger review found the group advantage smaller than this, and this vault cites both.
Burke and colleagues compared the settings in which physical activity programmes are delivered, pooling forty-four studies and more than two hundred comparisons across five outcomes: whether people kept going, social interaction, quality of life, and physiological and functional effects. Four settings were compared: exercising at home with no contact from anyone, at home with some contact from a researcher or health professional, in a standard exercise class, and in a class deliberately built on group-dynamics principles to make the group cohesive. One ordering appeared across nearly every outcome. The deliberately built group beat the standard class. The standard class was no better than exercising at home with contact. And exercising at home with contact beat exercising at home alone. The practical reading is that contact with another person is doing much of the work, and that simply putting people in a room together adds little unless the group is built. A later and larger review found the group advantage smaller than this, and this vault cites both.
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What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
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Where we use it
- Somebody Notices When You Are Missing, Why We Move
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The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.53841/bpssepr.2006.2.1.13
DOI: 10.53841/bpssepr.2006.2.1.13