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The Use of Web-Based Support Groups Versus Usual Quit-Smoking Care for Men and Women Aged 21-59 Years: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)
BACKGROUND
Existing smoking cessation treatments are challenged by low engagement and high relapse rates, suggesting the need for more innovative, accessible, and interactive treatment strategies. Twitter is a Web-based platform that allows people to communicate with each other throughout the day using their phone.
OBJECTIVE
This study aims to leverage the social media platform of Twitter for fostering peer-to-peer support to decrease relapse with quitting smoking. Furthermore, the study will compare the effects of coed versus women-only groups on women’s success with quitting smoking.
METHODS
The study design is a Web-based, three-arm randomized controlled trial with two treatment arms (a coed or women-only Twitter support group) and a control arm. Participants are recruited online and are randomized to one of the conditions. All participants will receive 8 weeks of combination nicotine replacement therapy (patches plus their choice of gum or lozenges), serial emails with links to Smokefree.gov quit guides, and instructions to record their quit date online (and to quit smoking on that date) on a date falling within a week of initiation of the study. Participants randomized to a treatment arm are placed in a fully automated Twitter support group (coed or women-only), paired with a buddy (matched on age, gender, location, and education), and encouraged to communicate with the group and buddy via daily tweeted discussion topics and daily automated feedback texts (a positive tweet if they tweet and an encouraging tweet if they miss tweeting). Recruited online from across the continental United States, the sample consists of 215 male and 745 female current cigarette smokers wanting to quit, aged between 21 and 59 years. Self-assessed follow-up surveys are completed online at 1, 3, and 6 months after the date they selected to quit smoking, with salivary cotinine validation at 3 and 6 months. The primary outcome is sustained biochemically confirmed abstinence at the 6-month follow-up.
RESULTS
From November 2016 to September 2018, 960 participants in 36 groups were recruited for the randomized controlled trial, in addition to 20 participants in an initial pilot group. Data analysis will commence soon for the randomized controlled trial based on data from 896 of the 960 participants (93.3%), with 56 participants lost to follow-up and 8 dropouts.
CONCLUSIONS
This study combines the mobile platform of Twitter with a support group for quitting smoking. Findings will inform the efficacy of virtual peer-to-peer support groups for quitting smoking and potentially elucidate gender differences in quit rates found in prior research.
CLINICALTRIAL
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02823028; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0282302
Analyzing the Engagement of Social Relationships During Life Event Shocks in Social Media
Individuals experiencing unexpected distressing events, shocks, often rely on
their social network for support. While prior work has shown how social
networks respond to shocks, these studies usually treat all ties equally,
despite differences in the support provided by different social relationships.
Here, we conduct a computational analysis on Twitter that examines how
responses to online shocks differ by the relationship type of a user dyad. We
introduce a new dataset of over 13K instances of individuals' self-reporting
shock events on Twitter and construct networks of relationship-labeled dyadic
interactions around these events. By examining behaviors across 110K replies to
shocked users in a pseudo-causal analysis, we demonstrate relationship-specific
patterns in response levels and topic shifts. We also show that while
well-established social dimensions of closeness such as tie strength and
structural embeddedness contribute to shock responsiveness, the degree of
impact is highly dependent on relationship and shock types. Our findings
indicate that social relationships contain highly distinctive characteristics
in network interactions and that relationship-specific behaviors in online
shock responses are unique from those of offline settings.Comment: Accepted to ICWSM 2023. 12 pages, 5 figures, 5 table
An exploratory investigation on the effects of online social networking sites on college students
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, mainly the effects on their communication. A study at Rowan University was conducted using a random selection of undergraduate students. The Rowan Subject pool was used to recruit students. Although each student was in different majors, all of the students were in an introduction to psychology course. To examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, there were two separate groups of students designed to interact with one another in two different ways. A group was instructed to communicate face-to-face on a topic and the group were audio and visually recorded. The other group was instructed to communicate through a Facebook page created by the researcher. A status was posted on the main page and the subjects were instructed to communication via Facebook. To examine communication, the number of words was counted. I hypothesized due to the increased use of online social networking sites; the group communicating through Facebook would have a higher word count than the group communicating face-to-face
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