Eating Impulse Analyzer

On May 6, the CSCI 242 class presented its project to the class and a number of guests who were computer executives from government and industry. The project is the Eating Impulse Analyzer.

The project is based on the work of Dr. Bill Picon, the senior clinical psychologist at the George Washington University Weight Control Program. The Program is one of the leading weight control programs in the country, and has been pioneering weight control for nearly 30 years. Dr. Arthur Frank, founder of the Program, is one of the country's leading medical experts on weight management. A common problem of patients in the Program is that in spite of medical advice to change their eating habits, and very strict dietary guidelines to follow, they persist in eating habits that cause them to be overweight.

Dr. Picon theorized that much out of control eating came from emotional impulses whose causes might not even be recognized by patients, but that patients would resolve by eating. In order to treat the eating problem, then, a way needed to be found to enable patients to discover the sources of their own eating impulses. The questionnaire that became the Eating Impulse Analyzer was designed for that purpose. It has been completed hundreds of times by patients in the Program; reviewing past questionnaires helped patients discover the patterns in their own eating impulses and subsequent behavior.

The project has a number of academic objectives. The database objective was to introduce the idea of data-driven application development, which is driven and controlled by a well thought-out data model that is a robust representation of the problem. In addition, some experimental ideas about software engineering are introduced: that requirements analysis, database design and coding can in fact be carried out in parallel and can inform each other as they progress, rather than serializing these activities, the more common practice. Finally, the project was intended to provide a realistic experience in application development, of the scope commonly encountered by professionals. The project was carried out under realistic conditions, with requirements evolving as development took place.

The class project was intended to build a database-driven Web application that would allow patients to complete the questionnaire and then apply analytical tools to their own questionnaires. The application also allows a therapist to analyze all of that therapist's patients and to read their questionnaires. A therapist may also establish a researcher, who can read and analyze that therapist's patients' questionnaires but cannot see their identities.

A foldering system was implemented to manage questionnaire data. All of a patient's questionnaires are automatically placed into a home folder. The patient can create additional folders and move questionnaires to them; then a folder can be analyzed, in order to analyze a group of questionnaires. Therapists and researchers can similarly create folders and place questionnaires of any of their patients into their folders for analysis.

A variety of analytical tools are provided to help patients and other users to identify patterns of answers, including looking for common answers to questions to characterizing the emotional content of answers and displaying a Kiviat chart of emotions. The two photographs show screen shots of the questionnaires being administered and a Kiviat chart of emotional content of a questionnaire.