Abstract
With the increasing availability of smartphones, many tobacco researchers are exploring smartphone-delivered mobile smoking interventions as a disseminable means of treatment. Most effort has been focused on the development of smartphone applications (apps) to conduct mobile smoking research to implement and validate these interventions. However, developing project-specific smartphone apps that work across multiple mobile platforms (e.g., iOS and Android) can be costly and time-consuming. Here, using a hypothetical study, we present an alternate approach to demonstrate how mobile smoking cessation and outcome evaluation can be conducted without the need of a dedicated app. Our approach uses the Qualtrics platform, a popular online survey host that is used under license by many academic institutions. This platform allows researchers to conduct device-agnostic screening, consenting, and administration of questionnaires through Qualtrics's native survey engine. Researchers can also collect ecological momentary assessment data using text messaging prompts with the incorporation of Amazon Web Services' Pinpoint. Besides these assessment capabilities, Qualtrics has the potential for delivering personalized behavioral interventions through the use of JavaScript code. By customizing the question's web elements in Qualtrics (e.g., using texts, images, videos, and buttons), researchers can integrate interactive web-based interventions and complicated behavioral and cognitive tasks into the survey. In conclusion, this Qualtrics-based methodology represents a novel and cost-effective approach for conducting mobile smoking cessation and assessment research.
Highlights
Smoking is a well-established risk factor for various types of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases and accounts for 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, making it the leading cause of preventable death [1]
To address the difficulty of developing study-specific smartphone apps, when resources are constrained, we describe an approach for carrying out mobile health (mHealth) tobacco research by taking advantage of the Qualtrics [24] survey platform (Qualtrics LLC, Provo, Utah, USA)
The basic information about study participants, including subject ID, mobile phone number, and email The visit dates for each subject The QSU-Brief scores by subject and visit The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) scores by subject and visit The implicit association test (IAT) data saved at the block level The point-prevalence abstinence data for multiple time points The data for the diary ecological momentary assessment (EMA), including daily cigarette, patch use, and affective measures The data for the random EMA, including the current craving level, recent smoking event, and patch usage The data for the spontaneous EMA, including the nature of the event and the trigger The deployed Qualtrics surveys The unique survey links by subject
Summary
Smoking is a well-established risk factor for various types of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases and accounts for 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, making it the leading cause of preventable death [1]. The basic information about study participants, including subject ID, mobile phone number, and email The visit dates for each subject The QSU-Brief scores by subject and visit The PANAS scores by subject and visit The IAT data saved at the block level The point-prevalence abstinence data for multiple time points The data for the diary EMA, including daily cigarette, patch use, and affective measures The data for the random EMA, including the current craving level, recent smoking event, and patch usage The data for the spontaneous EMA, including the nature of the event (smoking vs craving) and the trigger The deployed Qualtrics surveys The unique survey links by subject This table will track the response ID and the status. The embedded data became part of the final survey response
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