Text2Quit: an analysis of participant engagement in the mobile smoking cessation program

Abstract

Using interactive tools such as pledges and reporting on smoking status were predictive of cessation. Further study of program features is required to understand how to optimally design text messaging programs.

Engagement Within a Mobile Phone–Based Smoking Cessation Intervention for Adolescents and its Association With Participant Characteristics and Outcomes

“…Engagement, for instance, has been conceptualized in previous studies both as the usage or the subjective experience with the program [ 14 ]. For texting-based programs, there is some evidence that the predominant engagers are female [ 15 ] and older and that they exhibit lower rates of daily cigarette consumption [ 16 ], but none of these studies were conducted on adolescents.…”

“…Participants who elected to stop the program were less likely to be abstinent at follow-up. In another study by Heminger et al [ 15 ], rather than overall engagement, postquit engagement and the use of specific program features such as pledges were specifically predictive of 6-month abstinence. Even more accurately, a study by Christofferson et al [ 16 ] identified five different classes of user engagement, which in turn were associated with different levels of interventional success.…”

“…Three methodological issues make the contribution of a user’s level of engagement to long-term abstinence somewhat uncertain. First, only one study has reported long-term outcome associations with engagement [ 15 ]. Second, setting a quit date and having a quit attempt is an integral component of most smoking cessation programs [ 11 , 15 , 16 , 18 , 20 ].…”

“…This is of special interest, as most adult and adolescent smokers do not report any serious intention to quit within the next month [ 10 , 22 ]. Third, on the other hand, smokers who enroll in such cessation programs already tend to report an intention to quit smoking [ 15 , 16 , 20 ], which can lead to a self-selection of more engaged and thus, more successful subjects. To our knowledge, no studies have investigated engagement with a mobile phone–based cessation program in proactively-recruited smokers at different stages of change.…”

“…Factors that predict engagement and completion of the 3-month program were analyzed to sort out for whom such programs still need to be improved. We hypothesized that being female [ 15 ], older age, and smoking at lower daily rates [ 16 ] would predict engagement. In addition, this study investigated adolescents’ engagement with different features of a mobile phone–based intervention, as identifying more and less influential components of such interventions has recently been raised as a means to help refine other health behavior change programs [ 24 ].…”