Mobile phone text messages to support people to stop smoking by switching to vaping: Codevelopment, coproduction, and initial testing study

Sideropoulos, Vassilis, Vangeli, Eleni, Naughton, Felix, Cox, Sharon, Frings, Daniel, Notley, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0876-3304, Brown, Jamie, Kimber, Catherine and Dawkins, Lynne (2023) Mobile phone text messages to support people to stop smoking by switching to vaping: Codevelopment, coproduction, and initial testing study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 7. ISSN 1439-4456

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Abstract

Background: SMS text messages are affordable, scalable, and effective smoking cessation interventions. However, there is little research on SMS text message interventions specifically designed to support people who smoke to quit by switching to vaping. Objective: Over 3 phases, with vapers and smokers, we codeveloped and coproduced a mobile phone SMS text message program. The coproduction paradigm allowed us to collaborate with researchers and the community to develop a more relevant, acceptable, and equitable SMS text message program. Methods: In phase 1, we engaged people who vape via Twitter and received 167 responses to our request to write SMS text messages for people who wish to quit smoking by switching to vaping. We screened, adjusted, refined, and themed the messages, resulting in a set of 95 that were mapped against the Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation–Behavior constructs. In phase 2, we evaluated the 95 messages from phase 1 via a web survey where participants (66/202, 32.7% woman) rated up to 20 messages on 7-point Likert scales on 9 constructs: being understandable, clear, believable, helpful, interesting, inoffensive, positive, and enthusiastic and how happy they would be to receive the messages. In phase 3, we implemented the final set of SMS text messages as part of a larger randomized optimization trial, in which 603 participants (mean age 38.33, SD 12.88 years; n=369, 61.2% woman) received SMS text message support and then rated their usefulness and frequency and provided free-text comments at the 12-week follow-up. Results: For phase 2, means and SDs were calculated for each message across the 9 constructs. Those with means below the neutral anchor of 4 or with unfavorable comments were discussed with vapers and further refined or removed. This resulted in a final set of 78 that were mapped against early, mid-, or late stages of quitting to create an order for the messages. For phase 3, a total of 38.5% (232/603) of the participants provided ratings at the 12-week follow-up. In total, 69.8% (162/232) reported that the SMS text messages had been useful, and a significant association between quit rates and usefulness ratings was found (χ21=9.6; P=.002). A content analysis of free-text comments revealed that the 2 most common positive themes were helpful (13/47, 28%) and encouraging (6/47, 13%) and the 2 most common negative themes were too frequent (9/47, 19%) and annoying (4/47, 9%). Conclusions: In this paper, we describe the initial coproduction and codevelopment of a set of SMS text messages to help smokers stop smoking by transitioning to vaping. We encourage researchers to use, further develop, and evaluate the set of SMS text messages and adapt it to target populations and relevant contexts.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding information: This work was supported by a research grant from the Medical Research Council Public Health Intervention Development scheme (grant reference MR/T002352/1). Early title: Co-production of a mobile phone text message programme to support people to stop smoking by switching to vaping
Uncontrolled Keywords: sms text messages,codevelopment,coproduction,e-cigarette,ehealth,mobile phone,smoking,text message,vaping,medicine (miscellaneous),health informatics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2701
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Epidemiology and Public Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Public Health and Health Services Research (former - to 2023)
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural and Implementation Science
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Promotion
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Lifespan Health
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 14 Jun 2023 15:34
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 18:18
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/92396
DOI: 10.2196/49668

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