Mobile Ecological Momentary Assessment-based Peer Counselling for Youth Smokers: a Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Smoking Cessation
- Sponsor
- The University of Hong Kong
- Enrollment
- 105
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Biochemically-validated tobacco abstinence
- Status
- Active, not recruiting
- Last Updated
- 2 years ago
Overview
Brief Summary
This pilot trial aims to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of EMA-based peer counseling for youth smokers.
Detailed Description
Most smokers begin smoking during adolescence and early adulthood, a crucial period to prevent initiation and continuation of smoking. However, many proven smoking cessation interventions for adult smokers were not found effective in youth smokers, which may be partly explained by the vast differences in the pattern of tobacco use and determinants of quitting between adult and youth smokers. This calls for more research on novel intervention models to help young smokers quit. The HKU Youth Quitline provides free smoking cessation support for smokers aged below 25 years since August 2005 in Hong Kong. The service provides multisession peer-led telephone counselling with an individualised quit plan devised for each young smoker according to their responses. Since the counselling model depends on the information retrospectively recalled by the smokers, it may be prone to recall and social desirability biases and fail to capture the variability of youth smoking patterns and momentary changes in personal (e.g., mood) and situational (e.g., peer smoking) antecedents of smoking episodes. Recent advances in mobile technologies have enabled the use of more advanced and robust data collection approaches like ecological momentary assessment (EMA), which may benefit the counselling model by providing more ecologically valid data than traditional surveys. Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using EMA to collect data on psychosocial processes and smoking behaviours in adolescent smokers. Therefore, we propose to develop and test a mobile EMA-based counselling intervention for youth smokers by conducting a pilot RCT.
Investigators
Tzu Tsun Luk
Research Assistant Professor
The University of Hong Kong
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- •Age between 15 to 25 years
- •Have smoked in the past 30 days
- •Own a smartphone with an mobile instant messaging app installed
- •Can communicate in Chinese
Exclusion Criteria
- •Youth smokers who are participating in other smoking cessation studies or program other than the HKU Youth Quitline
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Biochemically-validated tobacco abstinence
Time Frame: 6 months after randomisation
Defined as a negative result of the iScreen OFD test for measuring salivary cotinine (with a cut-off of lower than 30ng/mL)
Secondary Outcomes
- Self-reported 7-day point-prevalence tobacco abstinence(6 months after randomisation)
- Smoking reduction by at least 50%(6 months after randomisation)
- Self-reported 30-day point-prevalence tobacco abstinence(6 months after randomisation)