4.1. Design, Experiment, and Participants
arrhythmia, ’, cord injury, anemia, dizziness, mental illness or disease, asthma, glaucoma, angina pectoris, cervical musculoskeletal system injury
ARRHYTHMIA, HEART DISEASE, ANEMIA, HIGH MYOPIA, ASTHMA, GLAUCOMA, HEART FAILURE, HYPERTENSION, ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS
Prior to carrying out the study, approval by the Institutional Review Board (102-3841B) was obtained. This research was conducted in a spacious classroom at a university in north Taiwan, between January 2014 and April 2014. The study was a parallel-group randomized controlled trial with 117 participants who were undergraduate and postgraduate students, ranging in age from 20 to 24 years old. The participants were solicited by hardcopy posters in the campus. Interested participants completed an online form to offer their contact information for further checking their eligibility of joining this research. The enrolled participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group and the control group using a random number table.Eligible participants were those who could communicate in Chinese, effectively taking part in the study and answering the questionnaire at the beginning and the end of research participation. Each participant offered written informed consent to join the study. The participants who reported the following health conditions were excluded: heart disease, hypertension, arrhythmia, heart failure, angina pectoris, spinal cord injury, ankylosing spondylitis, genetic arrhythmia, intracranial pressure, blood pressure instability, cervical musculoskeletal system injury, glaucoma, high myopia, anemia, dizziness, asthma, or had any other mental illness or disease history.A 12-week longitudinal design was adopted. The intervention group participants (The participants were asked to actually play exergames during the 12 weeks. The research assistants made appointments with them and supervised them to actually play the exergames. To maintain the participants’ patients, ten exergames were randomized for the participants to play. This approach increases the generality of the study findings.