An Internet-based abstinence reinforcement treatment for cigarette smoking

Optimizing behavioral health interventions with single-case designs: from development to dissemination

“…During this period, the dependent variable is measured repeatedly under control conditions. For example, Dallery, Glenn, and Raiff [24] used a reversal design to assess effects of an internet-based incentive program to promote smoking cessation, and the baseline phase included self-monitoring, carbon monoxide assessment of smoking status via a web camera, and monetary incentives for submitting videos. The active ingredient in the intervention, incentives contingent on objectively verified smoking abstinence, was not introduced until the treatment phase.…”

“…The goal is to generate enough replications, both within participants and across participants, to permit a confident statement about causal relations. For example, several studies on incentive-based treatment to promote drug abstinence have used 20 participants in a reversal design [24,25]. According to the SCD standards, there must be a minimum of three replications to support conclusions about experimental control and thus causation.…”

“…In a systematic replication, the methods from previous direct replication studies are used in a new setting, target behavior, group of participants, and so on [73]. The Raiff and Dallery study, therefore, was also a systematic replication of effects of internet-based CM to promote smoking cessation to a new problem and to a new group of participants because the procedure had originally been tested with adult smokers [24]. Effects of internet-based CM for smoking cessation also were systematically replicated in an application to adolescent smokers using a single-case design [74].…”

“…First, a single case does not mean "n of 1." The number of participants in a typical study is almost always more than 1, usually around 6 but sometimes as many as 20, 40, or more participants [24,25]. Also, the unit of analysis, or "case," could be individual participants, clinics, group homes, hospitals, health care agencies, or communities [1].…”

A Mobile Game to Support Smoking Cessation: Prototype Assessment (Preprint)

“…Monetary reward payments for smoking cessation can range from $100-500 per person for approximately 2-12 week interventions [11,17,18]. The cost of these payments limits the feasibility of widespread CM adoption.…”