My main research focus is on describing and predicting change processes in physical activity behavior. I adopt a complex systems perspective, which provides both powerful theoretical lenses and methodological tools to understand human behavior.
Here you can find some recent publications on this topic:
Baretta, D., Mazéas, A., Chalabaev, A., Inauen, J., & Chevance, G. (2026). Early Warning Signals of Sudden Changes in Walking Behavior. Submitted for publication. Accepted for publication at npj Exercise Medicine and Health on April 21st 2026. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/wpge7_v1.
Baretta, D., Koch, S., Buekers, J., Garcia-Aymerich, J., Knapova, L., Elavsky, S., Godino, J., Olthof, M., Lichtwarck-Aschoff, A., den Hartigh, R., & Chevance, G. (2025). Predicting recovery after stressors using step count data derived from activity monitors. Npj Digital Medicine, 8(1), 606. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01998-0
Baretta, D., Chevance, G., Mansour-Assi, S. J., Costello, V. L., Wing, D., Hekler, E. B., … Nigg, C. R. (2025). Exploring boundary conditions of physical activity maintenance: A secondary analysis of time-series data from a weight-loss intervention. Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2025.2554980.
Baretta, D., Koch, S., Cobo, I., Castaño-Vinyals, G., de Cid, R., Carreras, A., Buekers, J., Garcia-Aymerich, J., Inauen, J., & Chevance, G. (2023). Resilience characterized and quantified from physical activity data: A tutorial in R. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 65, 102361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2022.102361.
More generally, I am very much interested in any research which touches on the following aspects:
- Self-regulation of health-related behaviors, especially on the interplay between automatic and reflective processes.
- Development and assessment of (digital) behavior change interventions
- Intensive-longitudinal methods and time series analysis
