108 Chapter 5 Abstract Objectives: Obesity is a worldwide problem. Emotional eating is considered a risk factor for weight gain. A virtual coach might be of help. In order to enable the provision of online personalized coaching for emotional eaters, this study explored whether respondents recognized themselves in, for emotional eaters, essential proto-typical problem situations ‘experiencing cravings’ and ‘after giving in to cravings’, and whether they had a preference for the presented coaching strategies: Validating, Focus-onChange and Dialectical. Methods: An experimental vignette study (2 x 3 design) was carried out. Participants answered questions about personas that model the problem situations (two) and the coaching strategies (three). To identify potential predictors for recognition of problem situations, questionnaires on emotional eating (DEBQ), personality traits (Big-5), wellbeing (PANAS), and BMI were administrated. Results: A total of 62% of the respondents identified themselves with ‘after giving in to cravings’ and 47% with ‘experiencing cravings’. BMI, emotional eating and emotional stability appear to be predictors in recognizing both the problem situations. In ‘experiencing cravings’, the participating women preferred Dialectical and the Validation coaching strategies. In the ‘after giving in to cravings’ condition, they revealed a preference for the Dialectical and the Focus-on-Change coaching strategies. Conclusions: Personas representing the problem situations were satisfactorily recognized. However, to increase recognition, it is important that user recognition is guided by characteristics related to the typical problem situations of emotional eaters. This could potentially contribute to more robustness of the design of the virtual coach. With the knowledge gained about the predictors that may influence recognition of the problem situations, design for coaching can be more customized. Keywords: Personalized virtual coach, coaching strategies, emotional eating, persona
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