TRASPLANTE DE ISLOTES PANCREÁTICOS.

These results were fed back into the intervention to inform the intervention process to deliver a more acceptable and practical intervention and translate these modifications into the intervention.

5.6.1.1 Problem solving in Habit-Based intervention

To diminish the feelings of responsibility, the intervention process took to separating purchases made in the last 30 days. Once a list was constructed participants were then asked to rate them by frequency and how pleasurable the purchase felt. If the participants were unable to identify pleasurableness, then they selected the most frequent purchase decision.

100 5.6.1.2 Interventions used in RCT

Many participants were put off by the Checking intervention and did not see the value of the intervention, placing a much higher weight on reducing consumption or generating savings. As such there was much disinterest regarding the Checking intervention and participants were not overly motivated to continue further in this group, nor recommend this to others. As such, the Checking intervention was dropped, leaving two intervention groups, the Substitution and the Planning intervention.

This provided an interesting case in which two interventions were used that opposed from distinct structural processes; one using a top-down goal-directed manner (Planning intervention), whilst the other used a bottom-up habit-based system (Substitution intervention). As such, these were renamed to the Goal-Setting intervention and Habit-Based intervention respectively. This was done to represent how these interventions map onto an axis of goal-directed to habitual actions, where these interventions sought the same outcome through opposing processes.

5.6.1.3 Use and submission of the behavioural tools

The submission and use of the credit-card sleeve did not produce any difficulties and the sleeves were retained till the end of the study, however to ensure constant access, an electronic copy of the sleeve will be uploaded online to a study website and sent to each participants in the Habit-Based intervention once per week.

Those in the Goal-Setting group needed to send each saved file every month to the experimenter. This would diminish the data collection as participants would likely not submit due to forgetting or the required effort, therefore, an automated version was required. This was placed on the Warwick Business School’s servers. The web-based expense tracker (see Figure 15) was designed in a similar way as the original with a few modifications. Firstly, the online version used an autosave feature which saved any changes onto the Warwick Business School servers. Secondly, by using an online platform, participants could create their own accounts and passwords, which gave them ownership of the tool and provided secure storage and confidentiality. Thirdly, only select boxes would require input, reducing the chances of participants interfering with the tool. Finally, by making the tool online, this generates a web address, which can be sent out to

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all participants in the Goal-Setting group and provides direct access to the tool by one click through an automated email.

Figure 15; Updated version of the web-based expense tracker.

5.6.1.4 Frequency of contacting participants

Contacting participant by telephone call was an sub-optimal solution, and was wholly impractical in terms of time and monetary considerations. This would require at least another two additional researchers which would far too costly to budget for. Therefore more automated processes should be considered.

The trial uses automatically generated e-mail system to generate and send emails as behavioural prompts and retention devices. This was done to minimise participants time demands in the intervention, and to provide a tool in which direct contact was accessible.

Emails were sent every Wednesday at 16:00 (local time), this was because this period was free for all participants as dictated by University scheduling. The Control group were sent an email to ask if they had any issues or concerns and to contact the research team. The Habit-Based intervention and Goal-Setting intervention groups were sent prompts to remind participants to use their behavioural tools.

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Those in the Habit-Based intervention were provided with a link to the credit-card sleeve to print off, in addition to a reminder to use the tool. This was to ensure that participants had access to the credit-card sleeve to document and tally substitutions.

Those in the Goal-Setting intervention were given a direct link to the web-based expense tracker. The direct link provided in the email reduced the time and effort required to navigate to the behavioural tool, this increases the probability of participants utilising the tool and increasing the effects of the intervention.

103 SAVINGS Trial

SUMMARY

• Pre-post differences were calculated through a fixed-effects linear regression. • Differences in monthly savings were conducted controlling for income as a

predictor, in addition to using savings ratios or propensity scores which divided total monthly savings by income.

• Significant intervention effects were exhibited in all but one financial domain of Account Balances.

• Treatment effects significantly reduced monetary consumption whilst controlling for income in both groups.

• Treatment effects significantly improved monetary savings whilst controlling for income in Goal-Setting group in monetary savings.

• Treatment effects significantly improved account balances whilst controlling for income in both groups.

• Tool usage did not exhibit significant effects a main-effect in consumption or monetary savings, but does in Account Balances.

• Goal-Setting groups outperformed Habit-Based treatment effects in all but one domain of savings ratios in account balances.

• Fidelity results for the Goal-Setting group were favourable, but the goals were usually set too high for the participants and many struggled to attain their goals, despite saving considerable amounts.

• Those in the Habit-Based group exhibited a tendency to substitute behaviours rather than purchase choices within a defined context. This conceptual difference is likely to be one of the major factors why this group did not exhibit significantly different results from the Control group.

• The intervention was reasonable well received, and many participants identified the intervention did make them reconsider their purchase decisions, however several participants noted the effort sometimes would demotivate them to implement the intervention.

104 6.1 Background

This RCT, “The SAVINGS Trial”, uses two opposing interventions through distinctive behavioural processes to help motivate individuals to reduce their monetary consumption and improve savings. This was designed through formative research and feasibility work that led to the interventions (described below) being executed in a multi-site randomised- controlled trial.

6.2 Aims

1. Test the efficacy of behavioural interventions to improve financial capability 2. Reduce monetary consumption

3. Improve monetary savings and propensity to save 6.3 Design

Participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions; a Habit-Based intervention, a Goal-Setting intervention or a Control condition. Randomisation occurred based on a blocking protocol, randomly allocating participants within each block to reduce allocation bias. Participants were randomly allocated in a 1:1:1 ratio.

6.4 Duration

The intervention period lasted 12 weeks for each participant. This duration was based upon research in habit formation, which demonstrated that a median time of 66-90 days was required to form automaticity of complex behaviours (Lally et al., 2010). In addition, the Habit-Based intervention required a high frequency of substitution consumption to generate savings. The additional 24 days was utilized to provide a temporal buffer to help generate significant differences.