Preferences for coaching strategies in a personalized virtual coach for emotional eaters 129 5 variables. The initial answer categories that participants could choose from, were not articulated clearly enough. The response categories were as follows: 1) Yes, I can totally relate to L/A, 2) Yes, I can relate more or less, 3) No, I cannot relate very well, and 4) No, I cannot relate at all. To keep the recoding beyond all reasonable doubt, only the first answer ‘Yes, I can totally relate to L/A’ is recoded to ‘entirely’. The other answers, namely ‘Yes, I can relate more or less’, ‘No, I cannot relate very well’ en ‘No, I cannot relate at all’ are recoded to ‘not entirely’. Working with such strict selections may have had 'adverse' effects on the results, but the result is beyond any doubt. Had response categories 1 and 2 been combined, 86.8 and 90.6% of participants, respectively, would have identified themselves “totally”, or “more or less”, in “experiencing cravings” and “after giving in to emotional eating”. Finally, a potential limitation may have been that participants were not asked if they knew of any other proto-typical problem situations. Conclusions Possible important predictors of identification with the presented problem situations are BMI, emotional eating and emotional stability. The relationships between these characteristics and the degree to which participants recognize themselves in the problem situations, may offer perspectives for developing a virtual coach application that resonates with the emotional eater’s experience. The Dialectical coaching strategy apparently emerges as the most valued coaching strategy in both the proto-typical problem situations, namely ‘experiencing cravings’ and ‘after giving in to cravings’. In contrast, Validation is rejected as an appropriate coaching strategy by a significant proportion of participants. The finding that a large proportion of the group rejects Validation as coaching strategy requires more insight into the emotional eater's state of mind immediately after giving in to cravings. The recognition of the personas provided more insight for the design of the virtual coach, but developing personas with more uniformity in personal profile and background, focussed on the characteristics of the typical problem situations of the emotional eater, could potentially contribute to more robustness of that design.
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