Thabo Van Woudenberg

Substituting the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) with that of water can have a positive effect on adolescents’ health. However, despite the attention on this topic in the Global North, it is relatively understudied in other regions of the world, such as the Caribbean. To guide the development of future interventions, understanding th...

Background Social network interventions are an effective approach to promote physical activity. These interventions are traditionally designed using self-reported peer nomination network data to represent social connections. However, there is unexplored potential in communication data exchanged through web-based messaging apps or social platforms,...

Prosocial behavior is an important part of adolescent social development and is linked to their social environment. This study investigated how adolescents’ prosocial behavior is associated with the behavior of peers and whether more sociometric popularity is related to prosocial behavior. Adolescents (N= 383, 12–16 years) of 19 secondary school cl...

Typically, parents or other legal guardians are asked for an active declaration that the participation of their child in scientific research is informed and voluntary. However, asking for active parental consent leads to lower quality studies and passive parental consent might be preferable. In this study, we used an online survey in which parents...

BACKGROUND Social network interventions are an effective approach to promote physical activity. These interventions are traditionally designed using self-reported peer nomination network data to represent social connections. However, there is unexplored potential in communication data exchanged through web-based messaging apps or social platforms,...

Adolescents have been spending more and more time on social media, such as Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp. This dramatic shift in adolescents' media use has been followed by a steep rise in academic attention for social media and adolescent health, particularly their socio‐psychological well‐being. Contemporary research has investigated both negat...

Institutional review boards typically require researchers to use active parental consent procedures when studying children and adolescents. However, asking for active consent leads to smaller and more biased samples, and a larger total burden for parents. Therefore, asking for passive parental consent might be preferable, but this comes with uncert...

This study investigated the contents and linguistic styles that adolescents use in their dietary communications on social media. The main aim of the study was to describe adolescents' social media communication practices with regards to diet, in order to better understand dietary social influences and how to effectively intervene in them. The curre...

Studies have used two common methodologies to measure prosocial behaviors: self-report questionnaires and economic games. However, their interrelations and respective age differences have rarely been assessed. The current study investigated this in adolescents (N = 425, aged 12-17 years, 52% female, 99% Dutch ethnicity) using the Prosocial Tendenci...

In this study, we examined whether adolescents helped others during the COVID-19 pandemic and how stories in the media inspired them in doing so. Using an online daily diary design, 481 younger adolescents ( M = 15.29, SD = 1.76) and 404 older adolescents ( M = 21.48, SD = 1.91) were followed for 2 weeks. Findings from linear mixed effects models d...

BACKGROUND Although emerging adults play a role in the spread of COVID-19, they are less likely to develop severe symptoms after infection. Emerging adults’ relatively high use of social media as source of information raises concerns regarding COVID-19 related behavioral compliance (i.e., physical distancing) in this age group. OBJECTIVE Therefore...

Background Although emerging adults play a role in the spread of COVID-19, they are less likely to develop severe symptoms after infection. Emerging adults’ relatively high use of social media as a source of information raises concerns regarding COVID-19–related behavioral compliance (ie, physical distancing) in this age group. Objective This study...

Background: Although most young people do not become seriously ill from the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 disease, they do play a role in its spread. It is therefore important that they adhere to the recommended preventive behaviors, most importantly, physical distancing. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the psychosocial determi...

In this study, we examined whether adolescents and young adults help others during the COVID-19 pandemic and how stories in the media can inspire them in doing so. For this online daily diary study, 481 adolescents (M = 15.29, SD = 1.76) and 404 young adults (M = 21.48, SD = 1.91) were followed for two weeks. Findings of linear mixed effects models...

Background There is a need to develop and improve interventions promoting healthy drinking behaviors among children. A promising method could be to stimulate peer influence within children’s social networks. In the Share H2O social network intervention (SNI), peer influence was utilized by selecting a subset of influential children and training the...

Although most young people do not become seriously ill from the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 disease, they do play a role in its spread. It is therefore important that they adhere to the recommended preventive behaviors, most importantly, physical distancing. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the psychosocial determinants of you...

Objective To test the effectiveness of a social network intervention (SNI) to improve children’s healthy drinking behaviors. Design A three-arm cluster randomized control trial design was used. In the SNI, a subset of children were selected and trained as ‘influence agents’ to promote water consumption—as an alternative to sugar-sweetened beverage...

Background Positive associations exist between physical activity and happiness in adolescents. However, previous studies have mostly used self-reported measures and cross-sectional designs. There is a need for more insight into the directionality and duration of this association. The current study was the first to investigate whether an increase in...

Background Positive associations exist between physical activity and happiness in adolescents. However, previous studies have mostly used self-reported measures and cross-sectional designs. There is a need for more insight into the directionality and duration of this association. The current study was the first to investigate whether an increase in...

Bluetooth (BT) data has been extensively used for recognizing social patterns and inferring social networks, as BT is widely present in everyday technological devices. However, even though collecting BT data is subject to random noise and may result in substantial measurement errors, there is an absence of rigorous procedures for validating the qua...

Background: Adolescent physical activity (PA) is widely linked to positive health outcomes. Unfortunately, 80% of adolescents do not meet recommendations, which may be due to perceived barriers to PA. Peer interactions significantly affect adolescent PA behaviors. This study aims to analyze distribution of PA barriers throughout adolescent friends...

Background: People's eating behavior is assumed to be influenced by what other people do (perceived descriptive norms) and what others approve of (perceived injunctive norms). It has been suggested that adolescents are more susceptible to peer norms than parental norms, because they experience a strong need for group acceptance that leads to confo...

Background. People’s eating behavior is assumed to be influenced by what other people do (perceived descriptive norms) and what others approve of (perceived injunctive norms). It has been suggested that adolescents are more susceptible to peer norms than parental norms, because they experience a strong need for group acceptance that leads to confor...

Background Technological progress has enabled researchers to use new unobtrusive measures of relationships between actors in social network analysis. However, research on how these unobtrusive measures of peer connections relate to traditional sociometric nominations in adolescents is scarce. Therefore, the current study compared traditional peer n...

Over the past years vlogs rapidly have become an attractive platform for food industries, sponsoring social media influencers to promote their products. As with more traditional media, social media influencers predominantly promote unhealthy drinks and foods that are high in sugar, fat, and salt – consumption of which may increase the risk of overw...

There is a need to stimulate physical activity among adolescents, but unfortunately, they are hard to reach with traditional mass media interventions. A promising alternative is to carry out social network interventions. In social network interventions, a small group of individuals (influence agents) is selected to promote health-related behaviors...

Background People’s eating behavior is assumed to be influenced by what other people do (perceived descriptive norms) and what others approve of (perceived injunctive norms). It has been suggested that adolescents are more susceptible to peer norms than parental norms, because they experience a strong need for group acceptance that leads to conform...

Background. People’s eating behavior is assumed to be influenced by what other people do (perceived descriptive norms) and what others approve of (perceived injunctive norms). It has been suggested that adolescents are more susceptible to peer norms than parental norms, because they experience a strong need for group acceptance that leads to confor...

Background: Social network interventions targeted at children and adolescents can have a substantial effect on their health behaviors, including physical activity. However, designing successful social network interventions is a considerable research challenge. In this study, we rely on social network analysis and agent-based simulations to better...

BACKGROUND Social network interventions targeted at children and adolescents can have a substantial effect on their health behaviours, including physical activity. However, designing successful social network interventions is a considerable research challenge. For example, it is unclear which criteria should be used to select influence agents that...

Objective: In this study, we tested an integrated model for why young adolescents consume fruit, vegetables, and water. The model was based on evidence from studies applying three dominant theoretical approaches, including planned behavior, social norms, and intrinsic motivation. Method: The integrated model was tested with structural equation m...

The reduction of childhood obesity through the promotion of a healthy lifestyle is one of the most important public health challenges at the moment. It is known that the unhealthy habits of children can cause unavoidable side effects in their early stage of life, including both physical and mental consequences. This work considers that the physical...

Background: The current study examined the effectiveness of a social network intervention to promote physical activity among adolescents. Social network interventions utilize peer influence to change behavior by identifying the most influential individuals within social networks (i.e., influence agents), and training them to promote the target beh...

Background: Youth are an important target group for social network interventions, because they are particularly susceptible to the adaptation of healthy and unhealthy habits and behaviors of others. They are surrounded by 'social influence agents' (i.e., role models such as family, friends and peers) that co-determine their dietary intake and phys...