Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Getting Change-Space: A Grounded Theory Study Of Automated Ehealth Therapy, Marianne T. S. Holter, Ottar Ness, Ayna Johansen, Håvar Brendryen

The Qualitative Report

A promising tool for bettering people’s health is eHealth (or “mHealth”) programs: fully automated, web-based health interventions. However, we know surprisingly little about eHealth’s working mechanisms. One possible working mechanism is that program users benefit from a collaborative “relationship”—a “working alliance”—with the program. Although evidence support the existence of a person-to-program alliance it is unclear if and how it influences change. Therefore, we conducted a grounded theory study of how relating to an eHealth program for quitting smoking influenced the participants’ change processes. The ensuing model focuses on how participants got change-space—feeling free from social forcing and able to work …