Can a telehealth intervention influence levels of stress and mindfulness in university students?

INTERVENTION: The trial involves the delivery of a mindfulness intervention by one of three modes of delivery: virtual human, chatbot, or human zoom delivery. All participants come to the research centre for the first mindfulness session. The mindfulness session is based on the Video‐Conferenced Stress Management and Relaxation Training for Older Women with Breast Cancer (Antoni, 2017; VSMART) validated Mindfulness Meditation Relaxation Training intervention. This involves a preliminary question about the participants' stress level, a brief explanation of mindfulness, then approximately 12 minutes of mindfulness instructions. In the virtual human delivery condition, participants interact with the digital human, which is an advanced form of human‐like embodied conversational agent. The male digital human will appear on screen in a ‘head and shoulder’ framing while delivering the VSMART intervention by speaking it to the participant. The chatbot group delivery will be the same except the participants interact with an online automated chatbot, which is a more basic conversational agent without human form. The same VSMART intervention is delivered in a written text delivered on the screen. The human delivery of the session will involve the same script used by the virtual human and chatbot. To standardise the delivery format to be over a computer, the human condition will be delivered over zoom video from an adjacent room. The participant will interact with the human, who will verbally deliver the same VSMART intervention described above. This will be delivered by a male pre‐intern in a University psychology training programme receiving clinical supervision from a registered psychologist. In all groups, participants will be asked to complet CONDITION: Stress; ; Stress Mental Health ‐ Studies of normal psychology, cognitive function and behaviour PRIMARY OUTCOME: Stress as measured by a 100mm visual analog scale.[Measured pre‐ and post‐intervention (immediately after research centre mindfulness session), and at the one‐month follow‐up (primary time point).] Mindfulness as measured by the 15‐item Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), a short form of the 39‐item FFMQ (Baer et al., 2006).[Measured pre‐ and post‐intervention (immediately after research centre mindfulness session), and at the one‐month follow‐up (primary time point).] Stress as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale (Coehn, 1994)[Measured pre‐intervention, and at the one‐month follow‐up (primary time point).] SECONDARY OUTCOME: Perceived Empathy ; ; To assess participant perceptions of the human or agent’s empathy, a perceived empathy scale (Johanson, 2021) will be used. Participants will be asked to rate statements such as "the mindfulness ‘therapist’ made me feel at ease” and “If I were nervous, the mindfulness therapist would make me feel calmer” on a 5‐point scale anchored as ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘neutral’, ‘disagree’, or ‘strongly disagree'. A total score will be made. ; [This will be administered directly post‐intervention and at one month follow‐up.] Perceptions of Personality ; ; To assess participant perceptions of the human or agent’s personality, an adaption of Asch’s personality scale (Asch, 1946) will be used. Participants will be asked to select the descriptor they most agreed with from each of 18 different pair‐choice items (e.g. happy versus unhappy, sociable versus unsociable). Asch’s personality measure has been used in both psychological and social robotics research (Broadbent et al., 2013; Mann et al., 2015; Williams & Bargh, 2008).[This will be administered directly post‐intervention and at the one‐month follow‐up.] Homework Completion[Measured one‐month post‐intervention as the number of times an individual clicked the homework link.] Interacting again? ; ; Participants will also be asked “If offered the chance, would you want to interact with the therapist again?” and to provide a short, written response to their experience of the therapist agent about what they liked about the delivery of the mindfulness session, what they didn’t like, and what could be improved. ; [This will be administered directly post‐intervention and at the one‐month follow‐up.] Written Feedback ; ; Participants will be asked for a written response about what they liked and didn't like about the delivery of the mindfulness session, and how they think the delivery of the mindfulness session could be improved. ; ; [This will be administered directly post‐intervention and at the one‐month follow‐up.] Stress as measured by galvanic skin response using an Empatica E4 wristband, a research wearable.[During the intervention taking place at the research centre. ] Stress as measured by heart rate using an Empatica E4 wristband, a research wearable.[During intervention at the research centre.] INCLUSION CRITERIA: All individuals over the age of 18 years who read, speak, and write fluent English will be eligible for inclusion in this study. Participants must also have access to a computer or smartphone to have access to the homework sessions. Participants must be current University students.