First-time Parents Physical Activity Intervention

Clearly the prevention of chronic disease through physical activity promotion is an important research area. Identifying critical life transitions in people's physical activity behaviours may illuminate the most opportune intervention apertures for chronic disease prevention. A substantive evidence base now indicates that parenthood is one of these critical transition points for physical activity decline. Our proposed study will examine whether a brief, theory-based, and cost-effective intervention can help maintain/improve the physical activity behaviours of new parents in their first eight months of the parenthood experience. The study represents the first couple-based physical activity initiative in the parenthood literature; prior research has only focused on mothers and has shown short-term changes in physical activity that return to baseline levels after approximately one month. In light of the potential for couples to provide important sources of social support for the other parent within the household, it would seem remiss not to consider parenting interventions that are directed and evaluated at the dyadic level. Furthermore, couple-based interventions in other populations and other health behaviour domains have been shown as more effective than individual-level intervention. The long-term impact of this study, if the results support our hypotheses, has utility to prevent or curb the decline of physical activity habits based on our findings. This research has the clear potential to be applied to population-level knowledge translation sources such as prenatal classes, physician offices, and other early parent learning/counselling avenues.

Parents will be measured at baseline (2 months post partum) with two assessment points at six weeks (3.5 months post partum) and three months (5 months post partum) and a final follow-up assessment six months later (8 months post partum). The content of the theory-based intervention was derived from the results of our prior CDA and SSHRC-funded longitudinal trial of new parents using the theory of planned behaviour to predict changes in physical activity, the content used in prior pilot-level studies that has already been successful in changing short-term physical activity in mothers 26-30, and the content of our current CIHR-funded study of physical activity goal planning.

Primary Research Question

1. Does the theory-based condition improve adherence to regular physical activity among new parents when compared to those in the control condition at eight months after the birth of their first child? Hypothesis: Adherence will be higher for parents in the theory-based condition in comparison to parents in the control condition after controlling for possible confounds. The adherence effect may wane over time from the initial measurement period of two months after the onset of parenthood but all outcomes will remain significantly higher at eight months.

Secondary Research Questions