Objective: To explore the relationship between health coaches’ responses to emotional cues/concerns and women’s subsequent engagement with the health coaching mHealth platform.
Methods: 24 face-to-face video-mediated initial conversations between participants and their health coaches were coded using the VR-CoDES-P method. Women with high risk of developing Gestational Diabetes Mellitus were selected from the study, based on their engagement with the smartphone health coaching platform. 12 women with very low engagement and 12 women with high engagement were identified.
Results: In interactions with women with high goal engagement, coaches had significantly more counseling codes with prior other codes and no instances of non-explicit response codes that reduce space for further disclosure. Analysis showed that interactions with women with high goal engagement were more frequently met by the coach with affect-acknowledging and empathic responses prior to the counseling speech act.
Conclusion: High goal engagement among women with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus may appear to be associated with coaches facilitating the frequent use of empathy.
Practice implications: Findings can draw coaches’ attention to the impact that their counseling has on goal engagement, increasing the opportunity for intervention to be person-centered and effective.