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Effectiveness and cost of two stair-climbing interventions-less is more
Ellinor K Olander1, Frank F Eves
1School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, United Kingdom.
Purpose:
The current study compared two interventions for promotion of stair climbing in the workplace, an information-based intervention at a health information day and an environmental intervention (point-of-choice prompts), for their effectiveness in changing stair climbing and cost per employee.
Design:
Interrupted time-series design.
Setting:
Four buildings on a university campus.
Subjects:
Employees at a university in the United Kingdom.
Interventions:
Two stair-climbing interventions were compared: (1) a stand providing information on stair climbing at a health information day and (2) point-of-choice prompts (posters).
Measures:
Observers recorded employees' gender and method of ascent (n = 4279). The cost of the two interventions was calculated.
Analysis:
Logistic regression.
Results:
There was no significant difference between baseline (47.9% stair climbing) and the Workplace Wellbeing Day (48.8% stair climbing), whereas the prompts increased stair climbing (52.6% stair climbing). The health information day and point-of-choice prompts cost $773.96 and $31.38, respectively.
Conclusion:
The stand at the health information day was more expensive than the point-of-choice prompts and was inferior in promoting stair climbing. It is likely that the stand was unable to encourage stair climbing because only 3.2% of targeted employees visited the stand. In contrast, the point-of-choice prompts were potentially visible to all employees using the buildings and hence better for disseminating the stair climbing message to the target audience.
