JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Adolescence is a challenging period, facing rapid changes, increasing socio-emotional demands and threats, such as (cyber)bullying. Adolescent mental health and well-being can best be ensured by providing effective coaching on life skills, as coping strategies and protective factors. Interventions that take advantage of online coaching by means of chatbots, deployed on web or mobile technology, may be a novel and more appealing way to support mental health prevention for adolescents.

Objective:

In this pilot study, we co-designed and conducted a formative evaluation of an online life skills coaching chatbot intervention, inspired by the positive technology approach, to promote mental well-being in adolescence.

Methods:

We co-designed the first life-skills coaching session of the “CRI(S)” chatbot with 20 secondary school students in a participatory design workshop. We then conducted a formative evaluation of whole intervention (8 sessions) with a convenience sample of 21 adolescents of both genders (average age 14.52 years), who engaged with the chatbot sessions over 4 weeks, filling in a user experience anonymous questionnaire (5-point Likert scale) at the end of each session.

Results:

A majority of the adolescents found the intervention was useful (16/21, 76.1%), easy to use (19/21, 90.4%) and innovative (17/21, 80.9%). Most of participants (15/21, 71.4%) liked in particular the video cartoons provided by the chatbot in the coaching sessions, thought that a session should last 5-10 minutes (14/21, 66%) and they said they would recommend the intervention to a friend (20/21, 95.2%).

Conclusions:

We have presented a novel and scalable self-help intervention to deliver life skills coaching to adolescents that is appealing to them and can support the promotion of coping skills and mental well-being in youth.