Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Behavioural interventions often consist of conversations between counsellors and clients and can be a successful way to promote a healthy lifestyle. However, these interventions are not always successfully translated to other real-world settings. A possible reason for this variation in outcomes, is that researchers do not always measure how counsellors and clients interact with each other. Recently, a new method, called state space grids, has been developed to study and visualize how a counsellor and client interact with each other over time. This study will use these state space girds to study conversations about health-enhancing exercise between exercise counsellors and clients with spinal cord injury (SCI) to better understand the frequency, sequence, and duration of behaviour change techniques used in the interaction between the counsellor and client. This study is part of a larger trial of the effects of exercise to reduce chronic pain in adults with SCI. Participants in the study will receive tailored exercise counselling from a trained counsellor. Audio recordings of the counselling sessions will be analysed line-by-line by two researchers. This study is the first to use state space grids methods in an exercise behaviour interventions trial. It will provide new insights into how counsellors and clients with SCI interact with each other. These findings will help us to better understand how, when, and why the counselling sessions are successful or not. The findings can be used to develop training guides for SCI exercise counsellors and can improve SCI exercise counselling. In turn, understanding and improving effective exercise counselling will enhance lives of many Canadians with SCI.