Building habits with an online intervention

This study investigated techniques to support people to build a 10 minutes daily meditation habit with the help of an online intervention. Seventy-eight participants were equally assigned to three different online interventions. Their self-reported habit index score (SRHI) were compared before the online intervention and three weeks after the online intervention. The three different conditions entailed 1) a control condition (n = 26) that set a SMART goal with the student; 2) an accountability intervention (n = 26) that additionally asked students to tell their friends about their goals; 3) a preparatory habit intervention (n = 26) that additionally entailed setting sub goals. I statistically controlled for the level of motivation, age, and gender. The results showed that all three conditions yield significant improvement in the mean habit gain. Furthermore, the preparatory habit intervention was significantly more effective than the control condition (p = .012). There was no significant difference found between the accountability intervention and the preparatory intervention (p = .808) and the control condition (p = .205). This study emphasizes the benefit of not only setting a SMART goal but additionally setting sub goals to ensure the daily meditation habit.