An Internet-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment Study Relying on Participants' Own Mobile Phones: Insights from a Study with Young Adult Smokers

Abstract

Background: In this paper we describe a novel Internet-based cell phone-optimized assessment technique (ICAT) to conduct an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study. Participants could access the assessment instrument via the web browsers of their mobile phones. Methods: We report results from 92 young adult smokers (18-25 years old) who completed the baseline assessment and the first of 4 waves (3 days/wave) of EMA. Random prompts were issued via text messages sent to the participants. The participants were also instructed to self-initiate reports of smoking situations. Results: Compliance with the study protocols was low. In total, the participants completed 885 assessments during the 3 days of monitoring. Only 50.2% of random prompts were responded to, and 52.4% of those were completed within the first 10 min after issuing. Furthermore, reports of smoking situations were rarely self-initiated. In a multivariate regression analysis, age (positively) and female gender (negatively) predicted the number of completed assessments. Conclusions: This study adds to the limited experiences made with ICAT in substance use research. Similar to the few prior ICAT studies, compliance was low compared to traditional EMA studies. While using ICAT is technically feasible, specific improvements should be implemented to tap ICAT's full potential in future studies.

Acceptability and compliance with a remote monitoring system to track smoking and abstinence among young smokers

“…These overall rates of compliance are slightly lower than what is reported in EMA studies, which tends to be around 75-85% (47-49). EMA compliance rates specifically among youth smokers typically fall anywhere between 70-90% (22, 23, 50-52), though rates as low as 50% have been reported (53). It should be noted that compliance in this study included sessions that should have been prompted, but were not prompted due to the underreporting of cigarettes.…”

“…That contributed to the low compliance rates found in this study. Relying on user-initiated events to prompt sessions in EMA studies has been addressed in the literature as cigarette entries tend to underreported, which affects compliance calculations (23, 47, 53, 54). Results from the current study also showed lower rates of smoking in the first two days of the study compared to average CPD reported via TLFB at screening.…”

How Do Light and Intermittent Smokers Differ from Heavy Smokers in Young Adulthood: The Role of Smoking Restraint Strategies

“…The current analyses are based on participants from a German Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) study over 4.5 months designed to monitor young adults' smoking behavior (Thrul, Bühler, and Ferguson 2014, 2015). The present article draws on data gathered from the baseline assessment.…”

Developing an Internet- and Mobile-Based System to Measure Cigarette Use Among Pacific Islanders: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

“…EMA is a technique that involves the repeated sampling of participants’ behaviors and experiences in real time within their natural environment [ 6 ]. EMA has been used for more than twenty years to measure such behaviors as smoking [ 6 - 26 , 29 , 30 ], exercise [ 31 - 37 ], diet [ 38 - 42 ], substance use [ 43 - 50 ], and health information seeking [ 51 ]. Historically, these studies have been conducted using electronic diaries [ 7 , 9 , 13 - 21 , 24 , 30 , 34 , 39 , 40 , 52 ] that often facilitate survey completion rates greater than 85% [ 7 , 13 , 14 , 17 ] but also require extensive in-person training [ 40 , 52 ].…”

“…Another alternative is to employ Internet-based Cell phone-optimized Assessment Techniques (ICAT) to administer online surveys through the Internet browser of Web-enabled mobile phones. This technique is becoming increasingly popular, yet many studies that utilize this approach fail to achieve survey completion rates above 55% [ 10 , 29 , 57 ]. Moreover, recent ICAT studies of tobacco use [ 10 , 12 , 29 ] have not capitalized on the unique features offered by this approach, including the ability to use participant responses from earlier in the day to generate tailored survey questions.…”