Chapter 3 68 First, a pilot study will be conducted with 2-3 participants to validate the study protocol and to test the questionnaires. Participants are ensured in the anonymity of their participation. Data collected during this research study will be analysed for research purposes only. The data will be stored anonymously and safely on a local server, using an encrypted secure network connection (https) only the main researchers have access to. Recruited participants are invited by email to visit the stated link. They will be asked to fill out the demographics data, such as (nick) name, age, gender, weight, length, place of residence. Participants will be invited to participate in a semi-structured post-interview to discuss their experiences with the presented dialogues and their motivation for picking specific answers. Post-interviews will be audio recorded with permission of participants. Discussion, conclusion and future work This paper presents the research study design to evaluate and validate coaching strategies that emotional eaters prefer in a personalised virtual coach, based on their emotional state and context. The potential contribution of this research is divided into two objectives. First, a multidisciplinary holistic user-centered design approach [38] provides valuable insights into preferred persuasive coaching strategies of the target users for developing a meaningful and persuasive virtual coaching system for self-managing emotions. One of the primary goals of the personalised virtual coach for emotional eaters is to raise their awareness of their own emotions and to enhance a positive change of attitude towards accepting the negative emotions they experience daily. Ultimately, improving emotion regulation is expected to lead to better weight management of emotional eaters. Second, it will gain more insights into applying the behaviour change techniques from health psychology and persuasive technology for virtual coaching application. Next step is to focus on developing virtual coaching systems that coach the user by analysing real-time behaviour by providing real-time personalised timely feedback based on user profile, events, and context. Coaching-based applications can provide self-management support for patients at times when a therapist is not available, or in the case that the user needs personalised anonymous help that is always within reach, which is the case for emotional eaters who often experience feelings of shame. After conducting the vignette study we will be able to provide personalised and customised feedback and coaching based on experienced and digested emotions and feelings that users have entrusted to the emo.analyser, so the next step will be to
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