PurposeThis paper reports expert opinion on e-health intervention characteristics that enable effective communication of characteristics across the diverse field of e-health interventions. The paper presents a visualization tool to support communication of the defining characteristics.MethodsAn initial list of e-health intervention characteristics was developed through an iterative process of item generation and discussion among the 12 authors. The list was distributed to 123 experts in the field, who were emailed an invitation to assess and rank the items. Participants were asked to evaluate these characteristics in three separate ways.ResultsA total of 50 responses were received for a response rate of 40.7%. Six respondents who reported having little or no expertise in e-health research were removed from the dataset.Our results suggest that 10 specific intervention characteristics were consistently supported as of central importance by the panel of 44 e-intervention experts. The weight and perceived relevance of individual items differed between experts; oftentimes, this difference is a result of the individual theoretical perspective and/or behavioral target of interest.ConclusionsThe first iteration of the visualization of salient characteristics represents an ambitious effort to develop a tool that will support communication of the defining characteristics for e-health interventions aimed to assist e-health developers and researchers to communicate the key characteristics of their interventions in a standardized manner that facilitates dialog.

Background In order to improve interventions for problem gambling, there is a need for studies that can highlight psychological factors that support the desire to reduce gambling. Objective To explore online problem gamblers' motivation for change by studying participants' reactions to an online treatment referral website designed to motivate at-risk gamblers to seek help. Design A qualitative evaluation study, combining focus groups and in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using the general inductive approach. Informants The informants included 19 male, treatment- and non-treatment seeking, online gamblers who played a variety of games, including poker, sports betting and online casino. Results Motivation to change emerged as two processes including (a) empathy with others, which included projection of their thoughts and feelings onto others, and (b) dissonance between gambling behavior and ideal self-image. Dissonance included two subthemes: (i) dissonance due to positive feelings towards sports and athletics, and (ii) dissonance due to gambling among family. Conclusions The findings have implications for interventions designed to evoke motivation early in treatment of online problem gambling. Inducing problem gamblers to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of concerned significant others, real or fictional, could be a viable strategy to motivate online problem gamblers to consider change.

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