Developing a Multi-Component Intervention to Reduce Sedentary Behaviour and Promote Physical Activity for the Physical Activity at Work (PAW) Programme Among Office Workers in Thailand

Abstract Sedentary behaviour and physical inactivity increase the risks of non-communicable diseases. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation have resulted in more sedentary occupations, increasing the number of those suffering from the diseases. This paper describes the two main phases:1) prototype development and 2) feasibility of the process of complex, i.e., multi-component intervention development for the Physical Activity at Work (PAW) – a cluster-randomised trial with 6-month active multi-component intervention to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase physical activity in Thai office workers. The prototypedevelopment phase aimed to review existing theories and frameworks to synthesise the prototype intervention and conducted semi-structured interviews to understand office workers’ attitudes towards overall and occupational physical activity as well as sedentary behaviour. The feasibility phase aimed to implement a 2-week prototype intervention and conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate the attitude towards the intervention. The multi-component intervention was developed based on the Socio-Ecological Model framework, including 1) individual-level: a wearable activity tracker and lottery-based incentives, 2) societal-level: team movement break and team-based incentives, 3) environmental-level: posters with education on sedentary behaviours and how to perform movement breaks, and 4) organisational-level: leaders’ encouragement messages. Behaviour Change Techniques were used to mediate the effect of each component. Refinements were made throughout the intervention development process, guided by the results from each step. These processes inform other development of similar interventions for a large-scale study aiming at multifaceted behavioural change. Trial registration: The PAW study was registered at the Thai Clinical Trials Registry (Registration number: ID TCTR20200604007) on 02 June 2020 (02/06/2020).