Research project HABIT is a research project on how habits can support physical activity and exercise in older adults. The project develops and evaluates a digital application designed to help people form and maintain exercise habits. It also explores how older adults develop, adapt and return to physical activity and exercise habits in everyday life.
Regular physical activity and exercise are important for health and physical function throughout life, but making exercise a lasting part of everyday life can be difficult. The project explores how physical activity and exercise habits develop in older adults. It also develops and evaluates the HABIT application, a digital tool based on the Safe Step exercise app and extended with co-created features designed to support sustainable exercise habits.
Regular physical activity and exercise are important for maintaining physical and mental health as we age and can help prevent falls and several chronic diseases. Yet making physical activity a lasting part of everyday life is often difficult. Many interventions are successful in helping people start exercising, but less successful in supporting long-term participation. More knowledge is therefore needed about how physical activity and exercise habits are formed, maintained and changed in older adults, and how digital technology can support this process.
The overall aim of the HABIT project is to increase knowledge about how older adults can develop and maintain physical activity and exercise habits, and how digital support can be designed to make this easier.
The project aims to:
develop digital strategies for behaviour change and habit formation together with older adults;
investigate how these strategies are experienced and used in everyday life;
evaluate how use of a digital exercise application influences habit development and exercise behaviour; and
explore different patterns of exercise, motivation and use of digital support.
The project is carried out in several stages. In the first stage, strategies to support motivation, behaviour change and habit formation were developed through co-creation workshops with older adults and researchers from several disciplines. These strategies were then incorporated into an adapted version of the Safe Step exercise application, called HABIT within the project.
HABIT was evaluated in a three-month feasibility study using questionnaires, interviews and data on how the application was used. This allowed us to study both changes in exercise habits over time and participants’ experiences of what helps or makes it difficult to fit exercise into everyday life.
The project is expected to provide new knowledge about how physical activity and exercise habits develop in older adults and what makes it easier or more difficult to continue exercising over time. The findings may also contribute to the development of digital solutions that provide more individually tailored support.
In the longer term, the project aims to contribute to solutions that strengthen older adults’ ability to manage their own health and maintain physical function and independence, while allowing digital support to complement more traditional health care services.
