Causal DAG-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Long-Term Physical Activity Maintenance: Using Prior Data to Inform Future Deployment
Organizations: Harvard University · University of Michigan
Abstract
Digital health interventions can provide scalable, personalized support for physical activity (PA), yet sustaining PA over the long-term remains difficult. Because affective experiences with PA are important for activity sustainment, we developed an online reinforcement learning (RL) system for the forthcoming ADAPT factorial trial that personalizes twice-daily activity suggestions aimed at improving affective associations with PA. This setting poses several challenges: participant-specific data are scarce relative to the candidate state space, important states and rewards are partially observed, interventions are frequent while the primary outcome is measured weekly, and activity suggestions can both improve PA-related experiences and increase intervention burden. We address these challenges using an expert-specified causal directed acyclic graph as an integrated RL design tool, guiding state construction, estimation of partially observed states, delayed credit assignment, and representation of beneficial and adverse intervention pathways. We further construct a longitudinal simulator calibrated from a prior micro-randomized trial to compare candidate RL designs under realistic state evolution, missingness, and participant heterogeneity before deployment. Together, this work illustrates how causal domain knowledge and prior trial data can make long-horizon, participant-specific RL more practical for digital health interventions targeting sustained behavior change.
Figures & tables
| Process | Coverage |
| Weekly CAE | 92.7% |
| Next-four-hour step count | 89.9% |
| Anticipated affect | 93.8% |
| Perceived-utility-related mediators | 97.7% |
Appendix figures & tables39 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Factorial Trial Variable | MRT Surrogate |
| Short weekly survey measuring affective association of physical activity: 1. “For me, being active is …” with response options from unenjoyable (1) to enjoyable (7); 2. “Exercise leaves me feeling …” with response options from exhausted (1) to energized (7); 3. “For me, exercise is …” with response options from stressful (1) to relaxing (7). | Corresponding items from the Core Affective Experiences (CAE) survey: 1. “Exercise feels …” with response options from very terrible (1) to wonderful (7); 2. the CAE item corresponding to the energized–exhausted dimension; 3. the CAE item corresponding to the relaxing–stressful dimension. |
| Daily morning check-in survey: 1. whether the participant was active yesterday (this can also be reported elsewhere); 2. anticipated affect: “Next time I am active, I expect it will feel …” | The MRT end-of-day survey on day is used as the surrogate for the factorial trial morning check-in on day . In particular: 1. the MRT end-of-day item “Were you active at least once today?”; 2. the MRT end-of-day anticipated-affect item. |
| Active minutes: 1. Prior 2 hour active minutes 2. Next 4 hour active minutes | Step count: 1. Prior 2 hour step count 2. Next 4 hour step count |
| Component | Estimated weight |
| Intercept | |
| Variant | Policy class | Bottleneck TD | Reward design | |
| 1 | RL | No | None | |
| 2 | RL | No | None | |
| 3 | RL | Yes | None | |
| 4 | RL | No | V1 | |
| 5 | RL | No | V2 | |
| 6 | Never send | – | – | – |
| Participant | Page-view occurrence | Fitbit wear | Daily check-in | |||||||||
| BS | BS | BS | ||||||||||
| 1 | 154 | 0.416 | 0.418 | 0.234 | 76 | 0.842 | 0.847 | 0.129 | 77 | 0.714 | 0.717 | 0.168 |
| 2 | 154 | 0.377 | 0.375 | 0.224 | 76 | 0.895 | 0.896 | 0.089 | 77 | 0.662 | 0.662 | 0.131 |
| 3 | 154 | 0.026 | 0.029 | 0.023 | 77 | 0.883 | 0.879 | 0.086 | 77 | 0.221 | 0.214 | 0.146 |
| 4 | 154 | 0.292 | 0.288 | 0.136 | 76 | 0.803 | 0.804 | 0.151 | 77 | 0.169 | 0.187 | 0.096 |
| 5 | 154 | 0.130 | 0.130 | 0.111 | 76 | 0.868 | 0.866 | 0.083 | 77 | 0.156 | 0.157 | 0.087 |
| Participant | Prior two-hour steps | Positive page-view intensity | ||||
| Mean residual | RMSE | Mean residual | RMSE | |||
| 1 | 134 | 0.005 | 0.808 | 64 | 0.002 | 0.814 |
| 2 | 141 | 0.019 | 1.266 | 58 | 0.008 | 0.848 |
| 3 | 139 | -0.012 | 0.813 | 4 | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| 4 | 132 | 0.008 | 0.670 | 45 | 0.017 | 0.574 |
| 5 | 132 | -0.004 | 0.927 | 20 | -0.020 | 0.694 |
| Participant | Helpfulness | Pleasantness | ||||
| Mean residual | RMSE | Mean residual | RMSE | |||
| 1 | 11 | -0.009 | 0.078 | 11 | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| 2 | 10 | -0.006 | 0.167 | 10 | 0.032 | 0.216 |
| 3 | 6 | 0.000 | 0.009 | 6 | 0.008 | 0.135 |
| 4 | 5 | -0.004 | 0.216 | 5 | 0.019 | 0.208 |
| 5 | 3 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 3 | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Participant | CAE | Short CAE | ||||||||
| 1 | 10 | -0.111 | 10 | 0.113 | 10 | -0.549 | 10 | -0.009 | 10 | 0.167 |
| 2 | 9 | -0.723 | 9 | — | 9 | -0.305 | 9 | 0.195 | 10 | 0.250 |
| 3 | 4 | -0.152 | 4 | -0.789 | 4 | -0.284 | 4 | 0.197 | 10 | 0.370 |
| 4 | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | 10 | -0.306 |
| 5 | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | 10 | 0.002 |
| Participant | Anticipated affect | Fitbit wear | ||||||
| 1 | 39 | -0.111 | 39 | 0.026 | 75 | 0.059 | 69 | 0.020 |
| 2 | 40 | 0.533 | 37 | 0.173 | 75 | 0.041 | 69 | -0.096 |
| 3 | 4 | 0.995 | 5 | 0.612 | 76 | 0.025 | 70 | 0.040 |
| 4 | 4 | 0.941 | 1 | — | 75 | -0.017 | 69 | -0.159 |
| 5 | 4 | -0.997 | 3 | 0.243 | 75 | 0.312 | 69 | -0.021 |
| AM same-day PM | ||||||||||
| Participant | FourSC | Prior 2h steps | PV occurrence | PV intensity | Interaction | |||||
| 1 | 61 | 0.110 | 60 | -0.014 | 77 | -0.052 | 15 | 0.085 | 20 | 0.241 |
| 2 | 34 | -0.237 | 67 | -0.059 | 77 | 0.020 | 13 | 0.440 | 25 | 0.092 |
| 3 | 0 | — | 67 | -0.050 | 77 | -0.331 | 0 | — | 16 | 1.000 |
| 4 | 64 | 0.107 | 59 | 0.127 | 77 | -0.098 | 9 | -0.335 | 26 | -0.109 |
| Participant | ||||||||||||
| 1 | 11 | 0.392 | 11 | 0.599 | 11 | -0.144 | 11 | 0.334 | 11 | 0.107 | 11 | -0.717 |
| 2 | 10 | — | 10 | -0.600 | 10 | 0.035 | 10 | — | 10 | — | 10 | 0.343 |
| 3 | 6 | -0.633 | 6 | 0.193 | 6 | -0.493 | 6 | 0.435 | 6 | -0.022 | 6 | -0.794 |
| 4 | 5 | 0.566 | 5 | 0.103 | 5 | -0.781 | 5 | 0.609 | 5 | -0.613 | 5 | 0.206 |
| 5 | 3 | -0.395 | 3 | — | 3 | -0.974 | 3 | — | 3 | 0.174 | 3 | — |
| Participant | ||||||||
| 1 | 11 | -0.627 | 11 | -0.475 | 11 | -0.498 | 11 | -0.116 |
| 2 | 10 | 0.631 | 10 | — | 10 | -0.130 | 10 | 0.401 |
| 3 | 6 | 0.224 | 6 | -0.388 | 6 | -0.571 | 6 | 0.160 |
| 4 | 5 | -0.654 | 5 | -0.365 | 5 | 0.327 | 5 | 0.882 |
| 5 | 3 | 0.450 | 3 | 0.643 | 3 | — | 3 | -0.642 |
| Participant | AA–FW | AA–PJ | AA–AD | FW–PJ | FW–AD | PJ–AD | ||||||
| 1 | 55 | -0.085 | 55 | -0.038 | 12 | 0.143 | 77 | 0.017 | 12 | -0.275 | 12 | -0.370 |
| 2 | 51 | -0.042 | 51 | -0.444 | 13 | 0.646 | 77 | 0.054 | 13 | -0.219 | 13 | -0.224 |
| 3 | 17 | -0.309 | 17 | -0.023 | 13 | 0.184 | 77 | -0.024 | 13 | 0.013 | 13 | 0.178 |
| 4 | 13 | 0.060 | 13 | -0.200 | 7 | — | 77 | -0.100 | 7 | — | 7 | — |
| 5 | 12 | -0.039 | 12 | 0.108 | 10 | -0.358 | 77 | 0.112 | 10 | 0.541 | 10 | 0.489 |
| Participant | AM FourSC–AM P2h | PM FourSC–PM P2h | AM FourSC–PM P2h | |||
| 1 | 62 | -0.039 | 63 | -0.004 | 66 | 0.530 |
| 2 | 67 | 0.155 | 34 | -0.321 | 72 | 0.293 |
| 3 | 67 | 0.053 | 0 | — | 69 | 0.212 |
| 4 | 61 | -0.108 | 64 | 0.046 | 70 | 0.488 |
| 5 | 64 | -0.032 | 59 | 0.114 | 63 | 0.300 |
| Participant | FourSC– | FourSC–PV + | FourSC–AS | P2h– | P2h–PV + | P2h–AS | ||||||
| 1 | 68 | 0.007 | 34 | -0.108 | 32 | 0.104 | 65 | 0.343 | 32 | 0.407 | 31 | 0.236 |
| 2 | 72 | -0.006 | 28 | 0.337 | 44 | 0.090 | 69 | 0.245 | 28 | 0.114 | 41 | 0.038 |
| 3 | 70 | -0.186 | 4 | -0.264 | 32 | -0.759 | 69 | 0.090 | 4 | -0.293 | 33 | -0.035 |
| 4 | 72 | -0.088 | 21 | 0.130 | 38 | 0.026 | 62 | -0.009 | 19 | 0.040 | 34 | 0.047 |
| 5 | 65 | -0.204 | 9 | -0.065 | 30 | -0.251 | 67 | 0.043 | 8 | -0.708 | 31 | -0.008 |
| Participant | FourSC– | FourSC–PV + | FourSC–AS | P2h– | P2h–PV + | P2h–AS | ||||||
| 1 | 65 | -0.018 | 26 | -0.110 | 35 | -0.240 | 69 | -0.158 | 27 | -0.202 | 36 | 0.020 |
| 2 | 35 | -0.076 | 11 | 0.585 | 19 | 0.144 | 72 | 0.156 | 25 | -0.229 | 37 | -0.022 |
| 3 | 0 | — | 0 | — | 0 | — | 70 | 0.081 | 0 | — | 32 | 0.344 |
| 4 | 64 | 0.041 | 20 | -0.432 | 32 | -0.172 | 70 | -0.175 | 21 | 0.112 | 36 | -0.017 |
| 5 | 60 | -0.010 | 7 | -0.434 | 25 | -0.114 | 65 | -0.088 | 8 | -0.191 | 28 | -0.462 |
| AM | ||||||
| Participant | –PV + | –AS | PV + –AS | |||
| 1 | 34 | 0.084 | 35 | 0.478 | 15 | 0.497 |
| 2 | 30 | -0.011 | 48 | 0.447 | 16 | 0.116 |
| 3 | 4 | 0.154 | 35 | 0.532 | 3 | 0.277 |
| 4 | 21 | 0.141 | 41 | 0.448 | 14 | -0.167 |
Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement learning studies how agents learn sequential decisions from rewards and interaction, balancing exploration, performance, safety, and adaptation.
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