An exploratory study of mobile messaging preferences by age: Middle-aged and older adults compared to younger adults

Introduction: Mobile technologies, such as short message service or text messaging, can be an important way to reach individuals with medical and behavioral health problems who are homebound or geographically isolated. Optimally tailoring messages in short message service interventions according to preferences can enhance engagement and positive health outcomes; however, little is known about the messaging preferences of middle-aged and older adults. Methods: Utilizing secondary data, global messaging preferences were examined to inform the development of short message service interventions for adults of all ages. Two hundred and seventy-seven adults were recruited through an online labor market. They completed an online survey by evaluating message dyads in 22 content groupings. Dyads were identical in subject matter but structurally or linguistically varied. Participants selected the message in each dyad they would prefer to receive when attempting to meet a self-selected personal goal. Preferences were tested for two age groups 50 and 51 and older. Results: Findings reveal adults 51 and older have clear messaging preferences that differ significantly from the younger group for only two content groupings; specifically, they prefer no emoticon to a smiley face emoticon and ‘‘you’’ statements rather than ‘‘we’’ statements. Conclusion: Recommendations for optimizing messaging for older adults are reviewed

The Development and Validation of the Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire: Integrating the Perspectives of the Social Support Provider After Traumatic Injury

Social support is considered to be a protective factor against the development of PTSD after trauma. However, examinations of the social support-PTSD relationship have relied primarily on the self-reports of trauma-exposed individuals to the exclusion of their support providers. A new measure, the Supportive Other Experiences Questionnaire (SOEQ) was developed based on social support theory, prior research and psychometrics in order to capture important components of social support from the perspective of the support provider. Concerned Significant Others (CSOs) recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform who served as support providers to a traumatically injured romantic partner were recruited to respond to SOEQ candidate items and other relevant measures of psychopathology and relational factors. Confirmatory factor analytic results of SOEQ candidate items provide evidence for three social support subtypes (i.e., informational, tangible, and emotional) and two social support processes (i.e., provision frequency, provision difficulty). Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity provide good psychometric support for the measure. Evidence of construct validity was derived from support for two hypotheses: (1) Difficulty providing social support is negatively associated with support provider perceptions of trauma survivor recovery, (2) Social support provision frequency is positively associated with relationship satisfaction

Characteristics of individuals seeking a text messaging intervention for problem drinking: Adults 51 and older versus middle-aged and younger adults

According to the Institute of Medicine, the vast older adult population is estimated to have mental health and substance use disorders at unprecedented rates and will place high demand on an unprepared healthcare system. Online and mobile health interventions, such as text messaging, could provide an alternative form of frontline intervention that could alleviate some of the burden on the healthcare system; however, it remains unknown what are characteristics of adults over 50 who might be interested in a mobile health behavioral intervention and how they may differ from their younger counterparts. To explore the characteristics of those interested in a text messaging intervention by age, we examined screening data for a randomized controlled trial testing a text messaging intervention to reduce drinking among 1,128 hazardous and problem drinkers, aged 21-30, 31-50, and 51 and older. Participants were recruited online through website advertising on alcoholscreening.org and moderationmanagement.org. Results demonstrated that over a quarter of individuals pursuing online and/or text messaging treatment were 51 and older. These participants reported heavy drinking, with significantly greater number of days drinking and binge drinking than the younger groups, but with fewer consequences. Across age groups, a vast majority of participants were female. Findings demonstrate that a group of adult heavy drinkers 51 and older already pursue online treatment and are interested in using a text messaging intervention to help them reduce drinking, suggesting an avenue to engage this population using an alternative frontline treatment

Characteristics of online treatment seekers interested in a text messaging intervention for problem drinking: adults 51 and older versus middle-aged and younger adults

According to the Institute of Medicine, the vast older adult population is estimated to have mental health and substance use disorders at unprecedented rates and will place high demand on an unprepared healthcare system. Online and mobile health interventions, such as text messaging, could provide an alternative form of frontline intervention that could alleviate some of the burden on the healthcare system; however, it remains unknown what are characteristics of adults over 50 who might be interested in a mobile health behavioral intervention and how they may differ from their younger counterparts. To explore the characteristics of those interested in a text messaging intervention by age, we examined screening data for a randomized controlled trial testing a text messaging intervention to reduce drinking among 1,128 hazardous and problem drinkers, aged 21-30, 31-50, and 51 and older. Participants were recruited online through website advertising on alcoholscreening.org and moderationmanagement.org. Results demonstrated that over a quarter of individuals pursuing online and/or text messaging treatment were 51 and older. These participants reported heavy drinking, with significantly greater number of days drinking and binge drinking than the younger groups, but with fewer consequences. Across age groups, a vast majority of participants were female. Findings demonstrate that a group of adult heavy drinkers 51 and older already pursue online treatment and are interested in using a text messaging intervention to help them reduce drinking, suggesting an avenue to engage this population using an alternative frontline treatment

The intervening role of urgency on the association between childhood maltreatment, PTSD, and substance-related problems

A range of risk factors lead to opioid use and substance-related problems (SRP) including childhood maltreatment, elevated impulsivity, and psychopathology. These constructs are highly interrelated such that childhood maltreatment is associated with elevated impulsivity and trauma-related psychopathology such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and impulsivity-particularly urgency-and PTSD are related. Prior work has examined the association between these constructs and substance-related problems independently and it is unclear how these multi-faceted constructs (i.e., maltreatment types and positive and negative urgency) are associated with one another and SRP. The current study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relations among childhood maltreatment, trait urgency, PTSD symptoms, and SRP in a sample of individuals with a history of opioid use. An initial model that included paths from each type of childhood maltreatment, positive and negative urgency, PTSD and SRP did not fit the data well. A pruned model with excellent fit was identified that suggested emotional abuse, positive urgency, and negative urgency were directly related to PTSD symptoms and only PTSD symptoms were directly related to SRP. Furthermore, significant indirect effects suggested that emotional abuse and negative urgency were related to SRP via PTSD symptom severity. These results suggest that PTSD plays an important role in the severity of SRP

A randomized controlled pilot trial of different mobile messaging interventions for problem drinking compared to weekly drink tracking

This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) R34AA021502. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A randomized controlled pilot trial of different mobile messaging interventions for problem drinking

IntroductionRecent evidence suggests that text messaging may help to reduce problem drinking as an extension to in-person services, but very little is known about the effectiveness of remote messaging on problem drinking as a stand-alone intervention, or how different types of messages may improve drinking outcomes in those seeking to moderate their alcohol consumption. Methods We conducted an exploratory, single-blind randomized controlled pilot study comparing four different types of alcohol reduction-themed text messages sent daily to weekly drink self-tracking texts in order to determine their impact on drinking outcomes over a 12-week period in 152 participants (≈ 30 per group) seeking to reduce their drinking on the internet. Messaging interventions included: weekly drink self-tracking mobile assessment texts (MA), loss-framed texts (LF), gain-framed texts (GF), static tailored texts (ST), and adaptive tailored texts (TA). Poisson and least squares regressions were used to compare differences between each active messaging group and the MA control. Results When adjusting for baseline drinking, participants in all messaging groups except GF significantly reduced the number of drinks consumed per week and the number of heavy drinking days compared to MA. Only the TA and GF groups were significantly different from MA in reducing the number of drinking days. While the TA group yielded the largest effect sizes on all outcome measures, there were no significant differences between active messaging groups on any outcome measure. 79.6% of individuals enrolled in the study wanted to continue receiving messages for an additional 12 weeks at the end of the study. Discussion Results of this pilot study indicate that remote automated text messages delivered daily can help adult problem drinkers reduce drinking frequency and quantity significantly more than once-a-week self-tracking messages only, and that tailored adaptive texts yield the largest effect sizes across outcomes compared to MA. Larger samples are needed to understand differences between messaging interventions and to target their mechanisms of efficacy

Doomscrolling during COVID-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic

Consumption of traditional and social media markedly increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as new information about the virus and safety guidelines evolved. Much of the information concerned restrictions on daily living activities and the risk posed by the virus. The term "doomscrolling'' was used to describe the phenomenon of elevated negative affect after viewing pandemic-related media. The magnitude and duration of this effect, however, is unclear. Furthermore, the effect of doomscrolling likely varies based on prior vulnerabilities for psychopathology such as a history of childhood maltreatment. It was hypothesized that social and traditional media exposure was related to an increase in depression and PTSD and that this increase was moderated by childhood maltreatment severity. Participants completed a baseline assessment for psychopathology and 30 days of daily assessments of depression and PTSD. Using multilevel modeling on 1,117 daily observations, social media access was associated with increased depression and PTSD. This association was stronger for those with more severe maltreatment histories. Furthermore, those with more severe baseline psychopathology used more social media during this period. These results suggest that doomscrolling is associated with increases in psychopathology for those with existing vulnerabilities

Concerned Significant Others\u27 Experiences as Support Providers After Traumatic Injury

Social support is considered a protective factor against the development of PTSD after a trauma. However, examinations of the social support-PTSD relationship have primarily focused on the perspective of trauma exposed individuals to the exclusion of their support providers. The present study examined the self-reported experiences of Concerned Significant Others (CSOs) recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) who served as support providers to a traumatically injured romantic partner (N = 144). Items assessed the degree to which CSOs provided tangible, emotional, esteem, informational, and network support for their target significant other (TSO), how difficult CSOs found support provision, and how effective CSOs thought that provision was for trauma survivor recovery. Results suggested that CSOs’ reported difficulty providing each support type was associated with poorer perceived recovery trajectories in their traumatized significant others: tangible (b = .94, t[135] = 2.91, p = .004), emotional (b = 1.54, t[135] = 4.19, p \u3c .001), esteem (b = 1.02, t[134] = 2.74, p = .007), informational (b = .95, t[135] = 2.82, p = .006), and network (b = 1.03, t[135] = 2.85, p = .005). The more difficult CSOs found it to provide each type of support, the less improvement they saw in their traumatized significant other’s functioning. These findings indicate that CSOs’ internal experiences of support provision may impact trauma survivor recovery trajectories after a traumatic event

Understanding text-based persuasion and support tactics of concerned significant others

The behavior of concerned significant others (CSOs) can have a measurable impact on the health and wellness of individuals attempting to meet behavioral and health goals, and research is needed to better understand the attributes of text-based CSO language when encouraging target significant others (TSOs) to achieve those goals. In an effort to inform the development of interventions for CSOs, this study examined the language content of brief text-based messages generated by CSOs to motivate TSOs to achieve a behavioral goal. CSOs generated brief text-based messages for TSOs for three scenarios: (1) to help TSOs achieve the goal, (2) in the event that the TSO is struggling to meet the goal, and (3) in the event that the TSO has given up on meeting the goal. Results indicate that there was a significant relationship between the tone and compassion of messages generated by CSOs, the CSOs’ perceptions of TSO motivation, and their expectation of a grateful or annoyed reaction by the TSO to their feedback or support. Results underscore the importance of attending to patterns in language when CSOs communicate with TSOs about goal achievement or failure, and how certain variables in the CSOs’ perceptions of their TSOs affect these characteristics