General Requirements
Employers who agree to participate in the Physical Activity Challenge will invite their employees to enroll in a physical activity program and commit to a minimum of 8 weeks of physical activity, during which time employees will track their steps and/or exercise via an employer-sponsored platform. Participating employers must begin their program by no later than October 2015.
Participating employers are also required to share their general program design and both aggregate and average activity levels with an independent team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to contribute to the identification of strategies that will support successful engagement of employees in physical activity programs by employers across the U.S.
An organizational survey has been developed by the Johns Hopkins team to facilitate the sharing of general program designs by employers. The organizational survey is designed to assess elements of overall health and wellness programs in place, including organizational support and other features such as technology, educational materials, and challenges. It is intended to help identify elements that contribute to meaningful and lasting behavior change.
Participating employers are also asked to work with their program vendors to provide the evaluation team at Johns Hopkins with aggregate and average activity levels. A data dictionary for steps and other physical activity has been developed by the Johns Hopkins team to facilitate transmission of this information either directly from the platform vendor or through the employer.
Additional Information to Support Evaluation
Employers are also encouraged to invite their employees to complete brief, voluntary surveys to assist with further evaluation by the Johns Hopkins team. These surveys include a pre-challenge survey and short follow-up surveys to be completed after 8 weeks, and then again 6 and 12 months later, to evaluate the impact of physical activity on health and wellbeing and identify effective strategies for driving high levels of participation and sustainable behavior change.
The Johns Hopkins team has developed two survey tools—summarized below—to be administered to all eligible, participating employees (ideally through the physical activity platform vendor) for those employers who agree to participate in the additional evaluation activities.
An impact survey should be administered to all eligible employee participants prior to or as part of the enrollment process and again at the end of 8 weeks. Participants will also be asked to complete a subset of these questions at 6 and 12 months after the challenge to assess behavior change, improvements in physical activity, and other health outcomes of interest. The results of these surveys should be sent directly to the independent research team at Johns Hopkins using a standard data dictionary for the impact survey.
An engagement and satisfaction survey should be administered to all eligible employees invited to participate in the challenge, regardless of participation. This survey will be administered at the end of the 8-week challenge and is designed to assess promotional efforts and awareness, participation, and satisfaction with the Physical Activity Challenge. The results of such surveys should be sent directly to the independent research team at Johns Hopkins using a standard data dictionary for the engagement and satisfaction survey.
In order to link activity levels with the results of the surveys described above (to assess impact on outcomes), employers are asked to work with their physical activity platform vendors to provide the Johns Hopkins team with de-identified, participant-level activity data collected during the physical activity program. Johns Hopkins has developed a standard data dictionary for individual steps and other physical activity which can be shared with vendor partners to ensure they provide usable data. We ask that each participant be assigned a unique identifier to allow for longitudinal analysis of program impact over the course of the study and to link individual activity data with survey responses. All files transmitted to Johns Hopkins should be de-identified.
Physical Activity Challenge Employer Toolkit
Surveys and Data Collection Tools:
Data Dictionary for Aggregate Steps Activity
Data Dictionary for Individual Steps and Other Physical Activity
Data Dictionary for Impact Survey
Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Survey
Data Dictionary for Engagement and Satisfaction Survey
Consent Form for Employee Impact Survey
Consent Form for Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Survey