Self-monitoring, self-awareness, and self-determination in cardiac rehabilitation

  • Authors:
  • Julie Maitland;Matthew Chalmers

  • Affiliations:
  • National Research Council Canada Institute for Information Technology, Fredericton, NB, Canada;University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The application of self-monitoring technologies to the problem of promoting health-related behavioural change has been an active area of research for many years. This paper reports on our investigations into health-related behavioural change within the context of a cardiac rehabilitation programme, and considers the role that self-monitoring currently plays and may play in the future. We carried out semi-structured interviews with nineteen cardiac rehabilitation participants. Our main findings relate to distinctions between implicit and conscious change, tensions between cardiac rehabilitation and everyday life, the importance of self-awareness and self-determination, and an overall reluctance towards unnecessary self-monitoring. In view of these findings, we then offer suggestions as to how self-monitoring technologies can be designed to suit this particular context of use.