Description

An experiment to see if financial incentives improve weight loss

Format

A dataset with 38 observations on the following 3 variables.

Details

Researchers investigated whether financial incentives would help people lose weight more successfully. Some participants in the study were randomly assigned to a treatment group that was offered financial incentives for achieving weight loss goals, while others were assigned to a control group that did not use financial incentives. All participants were monitored over a four month period and the net weight change (Before - After in pounds) at the end of this period was recorded for each individual. Then the individuals were left alone for three months with a followup weight check at the seven-month mark to see whether weight losses persisted after the original four months of treatment.
The 4-month data alone (with missing values omitted) is stored in WeightLossIncentive4.
The 7-month data alone (with missing values omitted) is stored in WeightLossIncentive7.

Source

“Financial incentive-based approaches for weight loss," Journal of the American Medical Association by Volpp, John, Troxel, et. al., Vol. 200, no. 22, pp 2631-2637, (Dec. 2008)