Pre-notification and personalisation of text messages to increase questionnaire completion in a smoking cessation pregnancy RCT: an embeddedrandomisedfactorial trial.

Abstract

Low completion rates of questionnaires in randomised controlled trials can compromise the reliability of the results, so ways to boost questionnaire completion are often implemented. Although there is evidence to suggest that sending a text message to participants increases completion, there is little evidence around the timing or personalisation of these text messages. Methods: A two-by-two factorial SWAT (study within a trial) was embedded within the MiQuit-3 trial,looking at smoking cessation within pregnant smokers. Participants who reached their 36-week gestational follow-up were randomised to receive a personalised or non-personalised text message, either one week or one day prior to their follow-up. Primary outcomes werecompletion rate of questionnaireviatelephone. Secondary outcomes included: completion rateviaany method, time to completion, and number of attempts to contact required. Results In total 194 participants were randomised into the SWAT to receive a text message thatwas personalised early(n=50), personalised late (n=47), non-personalised early(n=50), or non-personalised late(n=47). There was no evidence that timing of the text message (early:one week before;or late:one day before)had an effect onany of the outcomes. There was evidence that a personalised text message would result in fewer completions comparedwitha non-personalised text message when data was collected only via the telephone(adjustedOR 0.44, 95% CI 0.22-0.87, p=0.02). However, these results were not significant when looking at completion via any method (adjusted OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.30-1.24, p=0.17). There was no evidence toshowthat personalisation or notwas better for any of the secondary outcomes. Conclusion Timing of the text message does not appear to influence the completion of questionnaires. Personalisation of a text message may be detrimental to questionnaire completion, if data is only collected via the telephone - however,more SWATs should be undertaken in this field.