1. A Dialogue Annotation Scheme for Weight Management Chat using the Trans-Theoretical Model of Health Behavior Change
Ramesh Manuvinakurike*+
Sumanth Bharadwaj+
Kallirroi Georgila*
+Equal contribution
* USC INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES

2. Introduction Obesity has reached epidemic proportions.
Unhealthy lifestyles resulting from undesirable health behaviors are partly to blame.
Many are willing to change their health behaviors but often don’t know how.
Am I fat? Is this a major issue?
What do I do? How do I fix this?
What changes can I make?
How can I maintain once I change?

3. Current methods
Forums such as patientslikeme where users share personal experience.
[difficult to tailor to specific needs]
Tailored content delivered through videos.
[expensive, not scalable]
Use of innovative methods (e.g., agent dialogues, games, storytelling) has shown promise in research literature.
Expert authored dialogues
Games
Storytelling
(doesn’t scale, not real-time)
(expensive)
(challenging to create/tailor stories per person)

4. Paired using crowdsourcing
Our approach
Data driven dialogue!
Crowd-source chat-based interaction data collection between remote participants.
Collect conversation in a role-play scenario.
Roles:
Seeker: Role played by one person who seeks to change their health behavior.
Helper: Role played by another person who helps the person seeking to change their health behavior by offering relevant tips and advice.
Paired using crowdsourcing
[HELPER CHAT]
me: …..
helper: …..
me: ….
[SEEKER CHAT]
seeker: …..
me: …..
seeker: ….

5. Conversation example
A sample conversation between the helper and the seeker.
Shows the annotation performed at word-level.
We’re interested in the Stages of Change, Processes of Change and the “Other” label.

6. Trans-theoretical model of health behavior change (Prochaska & Velicer, 1997)
Changes in health behavior happen in stages
Precontemplation
Contemplation
Preparation
Action
Maintenance
undesirable health behavior
desirable health behavior

7. Trans-theoretical model of health behavior change (Prochaska & Velicer, 1997)
Changes in health behavior happen in stages
Precontemplation
Contemplation
Preparation
Action
Maintenance
Change occurs through activities called “Processes of Change”
Helping relationships
Substance use
Environmental re-evaluation, etc.
undesirable health behavior
desirable health behavior

8. Relation between Processes and Stages of Change
Process of Change which have been shown to be effective in specific Stages of Change.

9. Other labels (Inspired from, Bunt et al., 2012)
We also annotate other labels.
These markers help identify the “slots” and “values” in the dialogue systems.

10. Classification experiments
We build classifiers for predicting
Stages of change
Processes of change
Other labels

11. Visit the poster!
Thanks!