Strategies and Behaviour Change Techniques to Optimise Sedentary Behaviour for People with Severe Asthma: A Nominal Group Technique

Background: While sedentary behaviour has been shown to be associated with adverse health outcomes for people with asthma, limited research has been done on how to improve sedentary behaviour in this population. We aimed to obtain key stakeholders’ perspectives on what is important to reduce sedentary time in people with severe asthma. Methods: Adults with severe asthma and their carers were invited to participate in a nominal group technique session. Participants volunteered strategies they considered important for optimising sedentary behaviour (reducing sedentary time and/or breaking up prolonged sedentary bouts). Following this, participants were instructed to identify the 10 most important strategies and rank these from most (10 points) to least (1 point) important. The 10 strategies that scored the highest proportion of the total possible score across all nominal group technique sessions were reported, and two independent researchers identified and deductively coded behaviour change techniques (BCTs) within these strategies. Results: Twenty participants attended one of five nominal group technique sessions. Severe asthma participants (n = 17) had a mean age (SD) of 69.9 (8.7) years, and self-reported spending a mean (SD) 7(3) hours per day sedentary. Carers (n = 3) had a mean (SD) age of 57.3 (21.0) years and self-reported a mean (SD) of 5 (2) hours of sedentary time per day. A total of 116 individual strategies were volunteered. With a weighted score of 8.3 (out of 10), “have a reminder or timer to minimise sedentary behaviour” was the highest weighted scored strategy. A total of 13 BCTs were coded to the list of the 10 highest weighted scored strategies. Conclusions: This study identified strategies important to people living with severe asthma and their carers for reducing time spent in sedentary behaviour. These strategies were coded to BCTs and can inform the design of future interventions to optimise sedentary behaviour. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing these strategies.