Gamification: What It Is and Why It Matters to Digital Health Behavior Change Developers

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Abstract

This editorial provides a behavioral science view on gamification and health behavior change, describes its principles and mechanisms, and reviews some of the evidence for its efficacy. Furthermore, this editorial explores the relation between gamification and behavior change frameworks used in the health sciences and shows how gamification principles are closely related to principles that have been proven to work in health behavior change technology. Finally, this editorial provides criteria that can be used to assess when gamification provides a potentially promising framework for digital health interventions.

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Most cited references 19

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Evidence-based guidelines are often not implemented effectively with the result that best health outcomes are not achieved. This may be due to a lack of theoretical understanding of the processes involved in changing the behaviour of healthcare professionals. This paper reports the development of a consensus on a theoretical framework that could be used in implementation research. The objectives were to identify an agreed set of key theoretical constructs for use in (1) studying the implementation of evidence based practice and (2) developing strategies for effective implementation, and to communicate these constructs to an interdisciplinary audience. Six phases of work were conducted to develop a consensus: (1) identifying theoretical constructs; (2) simplifying into construct domains; (3) evaluating the importance of the construct domains; (4) interdisciplinary evaluation; (5) validating the domain list; and (6) piloting interview questions. The contributors were a "psychological theory" group (n = 18), a "health services research" group (n = 13), and a "health psychology" group (n = 30). Twelve domains were identified to explain behaviour change: (1) knowledge, (2) skills, (3) social/professional role and identity, (4) beliefs about capabilities, (5) beliefs about consequences, (6) motivation and goals, (7) memory, attention and decision processes, (8) environmental context and resources, (9) social influences, (10) emotion regulation, (11) behavioural regulation, and (12) nature of the behaviour. A set of behaviour change domains agreed by a consensus of experts is available for use in implementation research. Applications of this domain list will enhance understanding of the behaviour change processes inherent in implementation of evidence-based practice and will also test the validity of these proposed domains.

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Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification

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Author and article information

Contributors

Brian Cugelman:

AlterSpark Corp.730 Dovercourt Road, #1909Toronto, ON, M6H 2W9Canada1 416 921 20551 416 921 2055brian@alterspark.com

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3680-4700

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): JMIR Serious Games

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): JMIR Serious Games

Journal ID (publisher-id): JSG

Title: JMIR Serious Games

Publisher: JMIR Publications Inc. (Toronto, Canada )

ISSN (Electronic): 2291-9279

Publication date Collection: Jul-Dec 2013

Publication date (Electronic): 12 December 2013

Volume: 1

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: e3

Affiliations

[1] ¹AlterSpark Corp. Toronto, ONCanada

Author notes

Corresponding Author: Brian Cugelman brian@ 123456alterspark.com

Author information

Brian Cugelman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3680-4700

Article

Publisher ID: v1i1e3

DOI: 10.2196/games.3139

PMC ID: 4307817

SO-VID: 4817d664-beb3-489b-9626-684c4a22449f

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Serious Games, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://games.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

History

Date received : 26 November 2013

Date accepted : 28 November 2013

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