Development and Perceived Utility and Impact of an Internet Intervention for Insomnia

Abstract

Insomnia is a major health problem, with significant psychological, health, and economic consequences. Studies have demonstrated that cognitive-behavioural therapy can effectively treat insomnia; however, treatment availability is limited by many factors, including a lack of trained clinicians. One potential way to overcome these barriers is to use the Internet to deliver treatment. Toward this aim, we developed a self-guided, interactive, tailored Internet intervention for adults with insomnia (SHUTi: Sleep Healthy Using The Internet). The current paper provides a detailed description of SHUTi and examines users' perceptions of the intervention's usefulness and effectiveness. The study was part of a larger randomised controlled trial (RCT) to test the efficacy of SHUTi, but findings in this paper are based only on the 21 participants who completed the postassessment after using SHUTi. The overwhelming majority rated SHUTi as convenient, understandable, and useful. Nearly all (95%) indicated that the program had at least somewhat improved their sleep, sleep efficiency, and overall quality of life. Ninety percent perceived the intervention as effective and predicted it would be effective in producing a long-term cure. Although these results were based on a small sample, they provide encouraging evidence of the potential for Internet interventions to be accepted by patients.

Telephone Support in an Internet-Based Treatment for Sleep Problems in Early Childhood

“…frequency of night waking and CBCL subscale "sleep problems") of the previously reported effects in pre-vs. follow-up and post vs. follow-up comparisons. Overall, these results are comparable with several other intervention studies improving sleep disturbances in young children [31][32][33][34]45,68] and other Internet-based intervention for sleep disorders in adults [50][51][52][53][54].…”

“…Different Internetintervention studies for several health problems and age groups yielded dropout rates between 2% and 83% in different reviews [36,71,72]. Our mean dropout rate was quite low (10.1%) compared to dropout rates of Internet-based treatment of insomnia for adults (24%) [54] or parents of young children (2,9%) [58]. The last result might be affected by payment to each participating family ($90 to $175) [58].…”

“…Other internet intervention programmes for different psychological disorders demonstrated their efficacy in several reviews and metaanalyses [36,[54][55][56][57]. However, online offers to prevent or improve sleep disturbances in young children are still rare [31] even though a survey illustrated that 95% of health-care providers for young children would recommend such an Internet program [37].…”

An Online Gratitude Intervention for Young Adults with Advanced Cancer

“…Acceptability of the intervention protocol will be measured using the Internet Evaluation and Utility Questionnaire (Ritterband et al, 2008;Thorndike et al, 2008). Included in this measure are two open-ended questions asking the participants to describe the most and least helpful part of the intervention.…”

“…Health Literacy: The Set of Brief Screening Questions (SBSQ-D) (Chew, Bradley, & Boyko, 2004;Sarkar, Schillinger, López, & Sudore, 2011) is a 3-item, self-report health literacy assessment that was developed as a low participant burden screening measure of Intervention Acceptability: The Internet Evaluation and Utility Questionnaire (Ritterband et al, 2008;Thorndike et al, 2008) was developed to measure participant experience and perceptions of Internet interventions. The measure assesses constructs including ease of use, convenience, engagement, enjoyment, layout, privacy, satisfaction, usefulness, comprehension, credibility, likelihood of returning, mode of delivery, and helpfulness.…”