E-cigarette use among women of reproductive age: Impulsivity, cigarette smoking status, and other risk factors.

INTRODUCTION: The study aim was to examine impulsivity and other risk factors for e-cigarette use among women of reproductive age comparing current daily cigarette smokers to never cigarette smokers. Women of reproductive age are of special interest because of the additional risk that tobacco and nicotine use represents should they become pregnant. METHOD: Survey data were collected anonymously online using Amazon Mechanical Turk in 2014. Participants were 800 women ages 24-44years from the US. Half (n=400) reported current, daily smoking and half (n=400) reported smokingsociodemographics, tobacco/nicotine use, and impulsivity (i.e., delay discounting & Barratt Impulsiveness Scale). Predictors of smoking and e-cigarette use were examined using logistic regression. RESULTS: Daily cigarette smoking was associated with greater impulsivity, lower education, past illegal drug use, and White race/ethnicity. E-cigarette use in the overall sample was associated with being a cigarette smoker and greater education. E-cigarette use among current smokers was associated with increased nicotine dependence and quitting smoking; among never smokers it was associated with greater impulsivity and illegal drug use. E-cigarette use was associated with hookah use, and for never smokers only with use of cigars and other nicotine products. CONCLUSIONS: E-cigarette use among women of reproductive age varies by smoking status, with use among current smokers reflecting attempts to quit smoking whereas among non-smokers use may be a marker of a more impulsive repertoire that includes greater use of alternative tobacco products and illegal drugs

Understanding User Engagement in the Open Collaboration Model of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing refers to the use of technologies to gather the collective effort and wisdom from an undefined group of online users for organizational innovation and/or problem solving. Further, open collaboration model refers to the crowdsourcing type wherein the crowd members discuss the submitted contributions among themselves to provide the final outcomes to problem owners. Regardless of crowdsourcing forms, a critical challenge for crowdsourcing service providers is to engage online participants in making sustained contributions. Inspired by Flow Theory (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihayi, 1988), the purpose of this dissertation is to examine whether the conditions of challenge-skill balance and clear and immediate feedback invoke the flow state, specifically an absorbed and enjoyable experience, and consequently make Internet users more engaged in the open collaboration events. The proposed relationships were tested through lab experiment, with the flow state being measured through both self-report survey and eye-tracking. As for the results, I found that perceived challenge-skill balance and perceived feedback were associated with the invocation of fun, but not the holistic flow experience in the brainstorming task. Moreover, fun was also found to positively associate with the indicators of the intensity and sustainability of user engagement. I also identified some exploratory ocular patterns of participants when they enjoyed the task at hand

Crowdsourcing novel childhood predictors of adult obesity

Effective and simple screening tools are needed to detect behaviors that are established early in life and have a significant influence on weight gain later in life. Crowdsourcing could be a novel and potentially useful tool to assess childhood predictors of adult obesity. This exploratory study examined whether crowdsourcing could generate well-documented predictors in obesity research and, moreover, whether new directions for future research could be uncovered. Participants were recruited through social media to a question-generation website, on which they answered questions and were able to pose new questions that they thought could predict obesity. During the two weeks of data collection, 532 participants (62% female; age = 26.5±6.7; BMI = 29.0±7.0) registered on the website and suggested a total of 56 unique questions. Nineteen of these questions correlated with body mass index (BMI) and covered several themes identified by prior research, such as parenting styles and healthy lifestyle. More importantly, participants were able to identify potential determinants that were related to a lower BMI, but have not been the subject of extensive research, such as parents packing their children\u27s lunch to school or talking to them about nutrition. The findings indicate that crowdsourcing can reproduce already existing hypotheses and also generate ideas that are less well documented. The crowdsourced predictors discovered in this study emphasize the importance of family interventions to fight obesity. The questions generated by participants also suggest new ways to express known predictors. © 2014 Bevelander et al

EXAMINING THE UTILITY OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMIC DEMAND IN ADDICTION SCIENCE

The marriage of perspectives from behavioral economic theory and learning theory has the potential to advance an understanding of substance use and substance use disorder. Behavioral economic demand is a central concept to this interdisciplinary approach. Evaluating demand in the laboratory and clinic can improve previous research on the relative reinforcing effects of drugs by accounting for the multi-dimensional nature of reinforcement rather than viewing reinforcement as a unitary construct. Recent advances in the commodity purchase task methodology have further simplified the measurement of demand values in human participants. This dissertation project presents a programmatic series of studies designed to demonstrate the utility of using a behavioral economic demand framework and the purchase task methodology for understanding substance use disorder through basic and applied science research. Experiments are presented spanning a continuum from theoretical and methodological development to longitudinal work and clinical application. These experiments demonstrate three key conclusions regarding behavioral economic demand. First, behavioral economic demand provides a reliable and valid measure of drug valuation that is applicable to varied drug types and participant populations. Second, behavioral economic demand is a stimulus-selective measure specifically reflecting valuation for the commodity under study. Third, behavioral economic demand provides incremental information about substance use in the laboratory and clinical setting above and beyond traditional measures of reinforcer valuation and other behavioral economic variables. These findings collectively highlight the benefits of behavioral economic demand and provide an important platform for future work in addiction science

Male Weight Control: Crowdsourcing and an Intervention to Discover More

Men and women have similar rates of obesity but the combined prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher among men. Men who are overweight are a high-risk group for many obesity-related chronic diseases, as they are more likely to carry excess weight in the abdomen, which is generally more harmful than weight stored in the lower body. Men are also less likely than women to perceive themselves as overweight, and thus are less likely to initiate weight loss through organized weight loss programs. On average, less than 27% of weight loss trial participants have been men. Internet-based research is a low-cost, efficient way to produce novel hypotheses related to weight loss that may have previously escaped weight loss professionals. Additionally, incentives are an effective tool to motivate behavior change, and there is ample evidence to support the use of incentives to encourage many health-promoting behaviors, such as weight loss. The purpose our initial study was to facilitate intervention development by using crowdsourcing to detect unexpected beliefs and unpredicted barriers to male weight loss. The aim of our main study was to evaluate the impact of financial incentives to facilitate weight loss in men, delivered as part of a weight loss intervention. Two separate studies were conducted. In the first project, participants were recruited to a crowdsourcing survey website which was used to generate hypotheses for behaviors related to overweight and obesity in men. Participants provided 21,846 responses to 193 questions. While several common themes seen in prior research were revealed such as previous health diagnoses and physical activity participation, other potential weight determinants such as dietary habits, sexual behaviors and self-perception were reported. Crowdsourcing in this context provides a mechanism to further investigate perceptions of weight and weight loss interventions in the male population that have not previously been documented. These insights will help guide future intervention design. For the main project, a randomized trial compared the Gutbusters weight loss program (based on the REFIT program) alone with Gutbusters with escalating incentives for successful weight loss. The six-month intervention was conducted online with weekly in-person weight collections for the first 12 weeks. Gutbusters encouraged participants to make six 100-calorie changes to their daily diet, utilizing a variety of online lessons targeting specific eating behaviors. Measures included demographic information, height, weight, waist circumference, and body fat percentage. Participants (N=102, 47. 0± 12. 3 yrs old, 32. 5 kg/m2, 80. 4% with at least two years of college) were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to Gutbusters or Gutbusters+Incentive. Significantly more Gutbusters+Incentive participants lost at least 5% of their baseline weight compared to the Gutbusters group at both 12 and 24 weeks. Similar to the aforementioned REFIT program, Gutbusters participants were able to achieve clinically significant weight loss. The Gutbusters+Incentive achieved greater rates of weight loss than the Gutbusters alone group, further supporting the value of incentives in promoting health behaviors