How to reach a target group with Internet-delivered interventions?
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Rik Crutzen Department of Health Promotion School for Public Health and Primary Care (Caphri) Maastricht University Maastricht, The Netherlands Once upon a time... ...there was the Internet. This article starts as a fairy tale, since this is in accordance with the way people used to talk about the Internet and its possibilities during the early days of its growth (in the late nineties of the 20 century). This fairy tale turned out to be true, insofar as the growth of the Internet has been enormous. Through its interactive character, for example, the Internet is thought to have great potential as a communication channel that can combine a high reach with tailored or targeted health promotion (Brug, Oenema, Kroeze, & Raat, 2005). The huge increase in possibilities of and access to the Internet has initiated an expansion of Internet-delivered health behaviour change interventions. It has been shown that Internetdelivered interventions can be effective in changing behaviour, but evidence from efficacy trials indicates that exposure rates are low (De Nooijer, Oenema, Kloek, Brug, De Vries, & De Vries, 2005). Exposure rates may be even lower when these interventions are implemented in real life rather than in a research setting (Evers, Cummins, Prochaska, & Prochaska, 2005). These findings touch upon a critical issue regarding Internet-delivered interventions: How could behaviour change ever be established if people are not exposed to the intervention itself? Prior to this question, it is important to know more about how to attract people to an Internet-delivered intervention among innumerable other websites that probably serve their gratification to a larger extent. This issue pertains to the concept of dissemination. Dissemination refers to the distribution of the intervention to the target population, including bringing the intervention to the attention of the target population. Successful dissemination of an Internetdelivered intervention is required before the target population can be exposed to the intervention’s content and use its components.
Institution: Maastricht University
Language: English
Subfield: Applied Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1461079636