Development of a Mobile Health Intervention to Support Functioning of Veterans With Substance Use Disorders

This project will involve the development, refinement, and pilot testing of a beta version of a mobile health intervention (Motivational Enhancement Therapy Skills for Veterans; "METS4Vets"), which will be delivered through a smartphone app.

Phase I: Preliminary METS4Vets content will be developed by the research team. Content will be developed by integrating research literature on digital interventions, evidence-based skills content derived from Motivational Enhancement Therapy, the "spirit" of Motivational Interviewing (e.g., using non-judgmental phrasing), and VA's existing My Recovery Plan framework. After preliminary content is developed, the research team will then solicit feedback on the proposed content through qualitative interviews with Veterans engaged in residential substance use treatment programming at VA (n=10) and VA clinicians who treat Veterans with substance use disorders (n=10).

Phase II: Using the content developed in Phase I, the investigators will conduct iterative, single session system acceptability and usability testing with Veterans engaged in residential substance use treatment programming at VA (n=12-15).