Statistical Analyses
Descriptive statistics was employed to describe participants' characteristics. Independent t-test, chi-square, and Mann-Whitney Test were used to examine differences between groups at baseline. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the effect of the intervention. Despite, with some degree of differences of demo- • graphic characteristics and ba seline data between groups, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOV A) with covariates was applied to maintain control over the type I error. Transformed data was performed to meet the assumptions of parametric analysis. Friedman chi-square (x') and Mann-Whitney Test were used when the assump tion for parametric analyses was not met. The significant level of the hypothesis testing was set at
.05. Effect size (ES) and power of .test were also
examined for the significant difference variables,
both between time points and between groups