Background and objective: Work settings provide a unique opportunity for health promotion interventions. Considering the issue of obesity among employees, this study was conducted to evaluate the effect of the intervention based on new communication technologies and the social cognitive theory on weight control in the governmental employees of the city of Hamadan in 2014.

Methods: This clinical trial study was conducted among “telephone-assisted intervention”, “web-assisted intervention”, and “control” groups comprising 435 employees with excess weight or obesity. The educational intervention was performed for 6 months under the title of “lifestyle program.” Then, the participants were evaluated in terms of weight and changes in the constructs of the social-cognitive theory 6 and 9 months after the intervention. A researcher-made questionnaire based on the Dishman and Dewar questionnaires was used to evaluate the constructs of social-cognitive theory. The data were collected and analyzed using one-way ANOVA, two-way analysis of variance, and linear Regression test through SPSS 20.

Results: The lifestyle intervention resulted in a weight loss of 1.92 and 1.08 kg among the telephone-assisted and web-assisted intervention groups, respectively. The intervention in the mobile telephone-assisted group increased the mean scores of the participants in the constructs of self-efficacy, environment, outcome expectations, and outcome expectancies. In the web-assisted intervention group, the mean scores of the constructs of self-efficacy and outcome expectancies increased.

Conclusion: The results of the present study showed the effectiveness of the intervention based on new communication technologies and the social-cognitive theory (SCT). We recommend conducting studies to evaluate other health challenges based on the Social-Cognitive Theory in work settings.

Paper Type: Research Article.