An interventional study of Anxiety Application and Procrastination Application in Anxiety and Worry, sponsored by VTan. Completed at 1 site in Singapore. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2022-07-26.
Sponsored by VTan · Not applicable, Interventional, and Supportive care
Anxiety and worry are amongst the most common mental health difficulties. The Second Mental Health Study found a significant increase in the lifetime prevalence for GAD, from 0.9% to 1.6%. In addition, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that among Singaporean students, 86% experienced anxiety levels that were significantly higher than the OECD average.
Past research revealed that individuals who worried more experienced decreases in life satisfaction. It was also found that worry and anxiety are significant predictors of one's psychological wellbeing .
In line with this trend, the market for wellbeing apps have been one of the fastest growing categories of apps ever since; with more than 10,000 on the market. Studies have shown that the use of wellbeing apps has been correlated with an improvement in mental wellbeing. However, due to the lack of research that focuses on disorder-specific evidence, there still exists debates around the effectiveness of wellbeing apps on anxiety and worry. In addition, the lack of research on the mediating factor of psychological mindedness in the relationship between the use of wellbeing apps and mental well-being, could be pivotal to the effectiveness of wellbeing apps.
To show the effectiveness of evidence-based wellbeing apps in targeting anxiety and worry, this study will employ the engagement of participants with a wellbeing app for a controlled period of 2 weeks before recording their mental wellbeing outcomes.This paradigm has been replicated extensively through multiple studies.
This study will use a between-groups experimental study design whereby participants will be block randomised into 2 conditions: Active control condition, and Anxiety condition. Each condition will be given a restricted version of the wellbeing app according to their treatment groups. Follow-up data will be collected at 2-weeks post intervention to establish efficacy of the intervention.
Objective 1: To evaluate the effectiveness of a wellbeing app self-help programme for reducing anxiety and worry.
Objective 2: To examine if psychological mindedness moderates hypothesised effects of wellbeing app usage and anxiety and worry.
Hypothesis 1: Participants in the intervention group will report significantly lower anxiety and worry than participants in the control group.
Hypothesis 2: Psychological mindedness will moderate the effect of the wellbeing app's self-help programme on anxiety and worry: Participants high in psychological mindedness will benefit more from the wellbeing apps than those with lower scores on psychological mindedness.
5,065 studies on the registry are indexed under Anxiety Disorders; 1,408 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 492 is above the median of 80 across 4,339 interventional studies indexed under Anxiety Disorders.
Browse Anxiety Disorders studies →This is the only study on the registry with VTan as lead sponsor.
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Exclusion Criteria:
Participants will download the anxiety application to their own handphones, and will complete the programme subsequently in their own time over the course of 2 weeks. The expected duration participants will spend on the anxiety application daily is estimated to be around 5 to 10 minutes, amounting to a total of around 140 minutes (2 hours and 10 minutes) during the 2 weeks intervention. Participants in the anxiety group are asked to complete daily brief exercises. For example, they will practice noticing worry thoughts and journal them down.
Behavioral: Anxiety Application
Participants will download the procrastination application to their own handphones, and will complete the programme subsequently in their own time over the course of 2 weeks. The expected duration participants will spend on the procrastination application daily is estimated to be around 5 to 10 minutes, amounting to a total of around 140 minutes (2 hours and 10 minutes) during the 2 weeks intervention. Participants in the procrastination group are asked to complete daily brief exercises. For example, they will practice to reduce procrastination-related thoughts.
Behavioral: Procrastination Application
The Intellect mobile app (containing the anxiety application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.
The Intellect mobile app (containing the procrastination application) can be freely downloaded from the App store and Google Play store for free. The app provides access to the different programmes. The mobile app has been pilot tested by Intellect before the release on the App and Google Play store. However, for this research project Intellect is going to provide the the programmes as stand alone applications exclusively for the participants of this research.
General Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7)
General Anxiety Disorder- 7 (GAD-7) is a 7 item self report instrument that measures anxiety and is widely used in research in clinical and nonclinical practices anxiety as a continuum (Siddaway, Taylor \& Wood, 2018) and is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing anxiety in a general population (Löwe et al., 2008). Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". GAD-7 produced an excellent internal consistency of α=0.92 in a sample of 2982 participants (Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, \& Löwe, 2006).
Time frame: Measured before the intervention
General Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7)
General Anxiety Disorder- 7 (GAD-7) is a 7 item self report instrument that measures anxiety and is widely used in research in clinical and nonclinical practices anxiety as a continuum (Siddaway, Taylor \& Wood, 2018) and is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing anxiety in a general population (Löwe et al., 2008). Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". GAD-7 produced an excellent internal consistency of α=0.92 in a sample of 2982 participants (Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, \& Löwe, 2006).
Time frame: 1-2 days after completing the intervention (2 weeks)
General Anxiety Disorder - 7 (GAD-7)
General Anxiety Disorder- 7 (GAD-7) is a 7 item self report instrument that measures anxiety and is widely used in research in clinical and nonclinical practices anxiety as a continuum (Siddaway, Taylor \& Wood, 2018) and is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing anxiety in a general population (Löwe et al., 2008). Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". GAD-7 produced an excellent internal consistency of α=0.92 in a sample of 2982 participants (Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, \& Löwe, 2006).
Time frame: 2 weeks after the completion of the intervention
Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 (PHQ-9)
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) i s a 9 item self report instrument that measures depression. Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". In a sample of 3000 patients in the PHQ Primary Care Study, PHQ-9 achieved an excellent internal consistency of α=0.89 (Kroenke, Spitzer, \& Williams, 2001).
Time frame: Measured before the intervention
Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 (PHQ-9)
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) i s a 9 item self report instrument that measures depression. Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". In a sample of 3000 patients in the PHQ Primary Care Study, PHQ-9 achieved an excellent internal consistency of α=0.89 (Kroenke, Spitzer, \& Williams, 2001).
Time frame: 1-2 days after completing the intervention (2 weeks)
Patient Health Questionnaire - 9 (PHQ-9)
Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) i s a 9 item self report instrument that measures depression. Items are scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from "not at all (0)", "several days (1)", "more than half the days (2)" and "nearly everyday (3)". In a sample of 3000 patients in the PHQ Primary Care Study, PHQ-9 achieved an excellent internal consistency of α=0.89 (Kroenke, Spitzer, \& Williams, 2001).
Time frame: 2 weeks after the completion of the intervention
Psychological Mindedness Scale
Psychological Mindedness Scale (PM): 45 item self report instrument that measures an individual's ability to be reflective about interpersonal relationships, psychological processes and meanings across both intellectual and emotional dimensions. Items are scored on a 4 point-scale ranging from "strongly agree (4)" to "strongly disagree (1)". The PM has a good internal consistency of α= 0.86 and recomputed to 0.87 in a study of 256 patients (Conte et al., 1990).
Time frame: Measured before the intervention
App Engagement Scale
App Engagement Scale (AES): 7 item self report feedback instrument that indicates the degree to which an individual engages with an app. Items are scored on a 5 point-scale ranging from "strongly agree (5)" to "strongly disagree (1)". This App Engagement Scale had good internal reliability, Cronbach's α = .839 in a study of 1349 app user (Rickard \& Bakker, 2019).
Time frame: Measured 1-2 days after completing the intervention (2 weeks)
Plan to share: No — Research data will be stored in an encrypted NUS nbox folder with viewing-only permissions set and restricted to the PI and co-investigator. Primary data will be kept secured in electronic form by the PI and co-investigator in a format that precludes subsequent alteration. Research data files (e.g Excel sheets) will only be accessible by PI and Co-PI. Survey data will be collected on Qualtrics secured with an account password and 2FA verification. Upon completion of the data collection, personal identifiable information(e.g. matric number from RP pool students) will be removed from the Qualtrics file, and the MS Excelsheet containing the data will be encrypted and stored in an encrypted NUS nbox folder, accessible only by the PI and Co-investigator. App data will be linked to a participant code given to participants. However, no personal identifiable data will be collected through the wellbeing app programs. Personal data will be only be shared with PI and Co-I as mentioned above.
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Ran from Jun 2021 to primary completion in Feb 2022, 8 months.
Of 2,720 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Anxiety Disorders, half reached primary completion within 13 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 5 and three quarters within 31. This study's 8 months is below that.
Counting every sponsor, half of 2,789 studies reached it within 12 months; a quarter within 5 and three quarters within 30.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
This study is completed, as verified in Jul 2022. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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