Mobile EMA-based Peer Counselling for Youth Smokers

The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Smoking Cessation

Treatments: Behavioral: Usual peer counselling; Behavioral: EMA-based cessation counselling; Behavioral: EMA assessment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05732220

202111159206

Details and patient eligibility

About

This pilot trial aims to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of EMA-based peer counseling for youth smokers.

Full 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.

Enrollment: 105 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 15 to 25 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Age between 15 to 25 years
2. Have smoked in the past 30 days
3. Own a smartphone with an mobile instant messaging app installed
4. Can communicate in Chinese

Exclusion criteria

Youth smokers who are participating in other smoking cessation studies or program other than the HKU Youth Quitline

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

105 participants in 3 patient groups

EMA+ group

Experimental group

Description:

EMA assessment + EMA-based cessation counselling

Treatment:

Behavioral: EMA-based cessation counselling

Behavioral: EMA assessment

EMA group

Active Comparator group

Description:

EMA assessment only + Usual peer counselling

Treatment:

Behavioral: Usual peer counselling

Behavioral: EMA assessment

Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Usual peer counselling

Treatment:

Behavioral: Usual peer counselling