MoVo-LISA +

In the course of digitisation, new ways of promoting physical activity are opening up. Smartphone apps, in particular, offer the opportunity to stabilize newly acquired behavior. Current research results confirm the future-oriented role of the blended care approach, in which face-to-face and digital interventions are combined (“blended”). Blended care approaches – in contrast to the respective individual components – appear to have greater potential for the sustainable promotion of physical activity (van der Weegen et al., 2015; Mouton et al., 2015; Kloek et al., 2017).

Against this background, the Freiburg MoVo research group, an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, sports scientists and computer scientists, is currently working on a blended care concept for the acquisition and sustainable maintenance of physical activity. The face-to-face program MoVo-LISA is combined with a smartphone app (MoVo-App) that is tailored to this program. The new program, called “MoVo-LISA+” (MoVo-LISA + MoVo-App), aims to sustainably consolidate the short- and medium-term change successes achieved with MoVo-LISA through the use of digital technologies. This is illustrated graphically in the figure on the right. The red line is currently only an expected result in terms of a hypothesis. Whether MoVo-LISA+ can actually achieve such a lasting change in sports and exercise activity remains to be proven in a randomized controlled trial (RCT). We are presently preparing such a study. The first results of a preliminary investigation are promising.