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Understanding the therapeutic process : mechanisms of motivational interviewing in weight loss maintenance

Background Nearly a quarter of UK adults are obese representing a significant public health problem. Motivational interviewing (MI) may be effective in helping people to lose weight. Planning could be a mechanism of action which is related to outcome. The aim is to define the types of planning talk used by clients during an MI session and examine their relation to weight loss maintenance (WLM) outcomes. Also to examine the skills the therapist used prior to a client talking about planning. Methods To define planning talk a literature review was conducted and an expert group listened to recorded MI sessions. Thematic content analysis was used to identify the types of planning talk. Thematic analysis was used to identify the therapist skills prior to planning within 50 MI sessions. Associations between types of planning talk and WLM outcomes were analysed using logistic and linear regression. Results The development of the coding system found several types of plans/goals. The reliability was 86% and 75% agreement with the gold standard, for examples of plans/goals and the transcript respectively. Frequent planners lost on average 2.8 kgs (95% CI) and 1.2kg/m² (95% CI) more than those who were low planners (not statistically significant). Medium goal setters statistically significantly increased on average their weight (8.8kg) and BMI (3.5 kg/m²) compared to low goal setters. Therapist’s skills prior to planning were asking the client planning questions and exploring with the client their planning ideas in order to increase specificity. Conclusion The coding system can be used to code WLM data with acceptable reliability. A possible association between planning and a decrease in weight and BMI was demonstrated. Understanding how MI works could lead to improvements in the practice of MI by therapist, efficacy, focus research efforts and facilitate a better understanding of what helps people to change behaviours.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:646348
Date January 2015
CreatorsCopeland, Lauren
PublisherCardiff University
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://orca.cf.ac.uk/73303/

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