Walk the talk when technology fails

The aim of our project was to explore the effectiveness of a web-based mindfulness program for families living with mental and/or somatic illness by the means of a randomized controlled study including an experiment group (n=196) and a wait-list control (WLC) group (n=202) (Stjernswärd & Hansson, 2018). The test period for the 8-week program was set to 10 weeks, with pre– and post-test assessments, and a 3-month follow-up. After the randomization process, the wait-list participants were informed that their test period would start by mid-August (2017). By mid-August, we emailed registration information to all WLC participants, which enabled them to access the mindfulness program and to start practicing. Thereafter, weekly email reminders were sent to the participants, in a similar fashion as we did for the experiment group. By the third week into the test period, however, we realized that something hadn’t gone as planned…