The Effect of Negotiating a Quit Date on Attempting to Quit Smoking

Web- and mobile phone health behavior change interventions, including smoking cessation programs, offer great promise, but little is known about how such interventions should be designed to increase their efficacy

The primary purpose of the current study is to test the effect of providing users of automated web-based smoking cessation interventions with the option of negotiating and re-negotiating the quit date.

The investigators propose a 2-arm RCT with 1500 adult study participants that all receive a best practices web-based smoking cessation program designed for use on smart phones (web-app). The intervention includes a ten day/session preparation phase (participants continue smoking) as well as a four week post-cessation follow-up phase (14 sessions). The post-cessation phase will only be given to participants that report an initial quit attempt. Participants will be randomized to two versions of the intervention: 1) A version that does not provide participants with the option of negotiating the quit day (the preparation phase is fixed to ten days/sessions); or 2) a version that provides the participants with the option of negotiating/re-negotiate the quit day on three occasions. The three occasions are on the first day/session of the intervention, on the fourth day/session of the intervention and on the eleventh day/session of the intervention. The primary outcome is making a quit attempt.