Enhancing the Scientific Foundation of Internet Intervention Research
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COMMENTARY
Enhancing the Scientific Foundation of Internet Intervention Research Russell E. Glasgow, Ph.D.
Published online: 9 October 2009 # The Society of Behavioral Medicine 2009
The articles in this special series provide a timely and much needed synthesis of key conceptual and evaluation issues in the science of Internet-based interventions. Because of the diversity in content area, disciplines involved, and publication outlets, there has been little consistency in how Internet program are conceptualized, reported, and evaluated. The articles by Barak et al. [1] and Ritterband et al. [2] take different but complementary approaches to conceptualizing Internet interventions. Barak et al. [1] propose a classification scheme along with key components on which Internet interventions vary. I found the key components described by Barak et al. [1] of program content, multimedia use, interactive activities, and feedback support to be especially helpful in differentiating among Internet interventions. Their Table 1 provides a useful differentiation among their four proposed categories of web-based interventions, online counseling and therapy, Internetoperated therapeutic software, and other online activities. These categories are helpful and move sequentially from more established intervention modalities to very recent, cutting edge applications about which much less is known. Their final category of other online activities, which might more descriptively be termed something like user defined interventions, encompasses many characteristics of Web 2.0 social interaction activities. This category also reminds us those Internet interventions, as well as the way in which users interact with the program, frequently evolve over time. A key implication is that interventions that seek to engage
R. E. Glasgow (*) Institute for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, P.O. Box 378066, Denver, CO 80237-8066, USA e-mail: [email protected]
users for an extended time period may need to migrate from more static structured, developer-defined content to less structured, more user-defined interactions over time. Ritterband et al. [2] highlight both the complexity of Internet interventions and the importance of context in this research area. Their model of nine components or nonlinear steps involved, and the areas and elements within each component, provide a relatively exhaustive framework within which to consider how Internet programs work and factors potentially associated with success. This overall model fills an important gap in the field and also presents an opportunity for subsequent, more specific theories to specify which areas (e.g., which mechanisms of change, which website characteristics) are most related to outcomes. In the absence of such theories, I offer some of my own speculations about key areas that future research can productively target within their model components. Under user characteristics, the areas of health literacy and numeracy, as well as race/ethnicity would seem to be important as does the number of
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