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Updated: Aug 26, 2025
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Concept Development and Use of an Automated Food Intake and Eating Behavior Assessment Method
Published on: February 19, 2021
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Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent for Parents as Proxies for Their Children in Healthy Eating:
Diva Smriti1, Tsui-Sui Annie Kao2, Rahil Rathod3
1College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
JMIR Human Factors
|October 7, 2022
Summary
This study developed a Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent (MICA) to help parents improve their children's healthy eating habits. Parents found MICA useful for self-reflection and motivation, suggesting its potential for supporting proxy health behavior change.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Science
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Digital Health
Background:
- Conversational agents (CAs) offer new avenues for delivering therapeutic interventions.
- Motivational Interviewing (MI) integrated with CAs provides accessible and cost-effective support.
- Parents often face motivation challenges in promoting healthy eating habits for their children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a Motivational Interviewing Conversational Agent (MICA) tailored for parents.
- To enhance healthy eating behaviors in children through parental proxy behavior change.
- To explore the utility of CAs in supporting proxy relationships for health.
Main Methods:
- User testing of the MICA prototype with 24 parents of young children.
- Two separate user test sessions conducted approximately two weeks apart.
- Qualitative interviews to gather parent perceptions and suggestions for MICA improvement.
Main Results:
- Parents perceived MICA as useful for self-reflection and motivation towards healthier eating.
- Participants highlighted MICA's potential in managing children's eating behaviors.
- Suggestions were provided for customizing MICA to meet parents' proxy needs and goals.
Conclusions:
- MICA demonstrates potential for improving user experience in CAs for parents acting as proxies.
- Design improvements can enhance CA support for proxy relationships in health behavior change.
- MI-based CAs can be effectively designed to support parents in influencing their children's health behaviors.
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