Recent Student Step Study

College student’s days are filled with numerous activities. Classes, meetings, and club events. Don’t forget meals with friends and study sessions at the library. Sometimes, it’s easy to neglect finding the time to exercise, even if it’s a simple home workout or a walk with friends. Do you feel as though you’re able to find adequate time to stay active on campus? 

As part of our Applied Behavior Analysis Seminar (PSYC 465), we identified sedentary behavior as an issue that impacts our local community at SLU. We decided to conduct a small walking study aiming to decrease sedentary behavior among our peers. Six St. Lawrence University students participated in our study and were paid $2 each day they met their step goals.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that adults should aim to walk at least 10,000 steps per day. According to a study from 2008, less than 5% of adults achieve the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity per day. The societal cost of this sedentary behavior is staggering.

For example, healthcare costs associated with treating obesity alone reach billions of dollars annually in the United States. The rise of cardiovascular diseases and other medical conditions due to inactivity puts a heavy burden on the healthcare system worldwide. Given the individual and societal consequences of sedentary lifestyles, there is a need for effective behavioral interventions that promote physical activity. 

Research has shown that boosting physical activity not only lowers the risk of physical health issues but also offers significant advantages for mental well-being, such as reduced stress and fewer depressive symptoms. The advantages of promoting more active lifestyles are extensive, both for the individual’s overall well-being and society as a whole. 

We collected everyone’s average number of steps, using Apple Health, for the two weeks prior to implementing the payment system. This gave us a solid benchmark to start with. Initially, most people averaged between 5 to 7 thousand daily steps each week. We let participants choose how much to increase their goal for the following week (a 15-25% addition to their previous average) and Venmoed them $2 every day they reached their goal. We chose $2 as a monetary amount that didn’t feel too big on a day-to-day basis but would quickly add up and still be motivating. Throughout the study, participants could earn up to around $50 simply for walking!

We aimed to identify additional health benefits that resulted from walking more. We measured the capacity of participants’ lungs before and after our study to determine if they became more physically fit. Additionally, we gave everyone a short wellness questionnaire at the beginning and end of the study to evaluate if walking more was related to better mental health. 

We hoped that by drawing attention to the physical and mental benefits of increased daily walking we could cause a long-term change in participants’ habits that would hold steady after we stopped paying them to increase their steps.

At the end of our study, we found, for the most part, that paying participants motivated them to increase their step count. Overall, participants met their goals more often than they fell short and increased their step count by about 2 to 3 thousand steps. At first, most participants achieved their goals without needing extra time or effort. However, as the goals increased during the study, it required greater commitment from participants to take those additional steps.

Seasonal weather changes and school breaks appeared to influence participant progress and motivation as goals were often missed on these days. However, being back in the campus environment after Thanksgiving helped participants achieve their goals again. As the weeks continued the participants’ step goals increased while the amount of money they received stayed the same. Participants expressed to us that an increase in the monetary reward would have helped motivate them to walk even more. We also found that the Apple Health app may not have been the most accurate form of data collection.

If you’re interested in learning more about our step study and results, check out our Instagram account @slu.step.study!