Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Feb 1, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 15, 2020
A mobile social network-based smoking cessation intervention for Chinese male smokers: a study protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Around 2 million Chinese people die annually from tobacco-related diseases, mostly men; yet fewer than 8% of Chinese smokers receive any smoking cessation advice or support. We develop a social network-based WeChat gamified smoking cessation intervention (“SCAMPI”) to help Chinese male smokers in China to quit smoking.
Objective:
The primary aim of this paper is to present the study protocol of a pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) examining the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of SCAMPI on the prolonged abstinence rate during a 6-week follow-up period.
Methods:
A two-arm pilot RCT will be conducted to assess the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of the SCAMPI programme as a smoking cessation intervention. After initial Web-based screening, the first 80 eligible participants who complete registration will be randomly allocated to the intervention group (n=40) and the control group (n=40). Participants in the intervention group use the full version of the SCAMPI programme, and participants in the control group use a restricted version (“placebo app”).
Results:
Recruitment commenced in January 2019. The primary outcome is 30-day smoking abstinence at 6-week follow-up verified by salivary cotinine. Secondary outcomes include participants’ cigarette consumption reduction (comparing baseline daily cigarette consumption to end-of-trial daily cigarette consumption); 7-day smoking abstinence at 4-week and 6-week follow-up (self-reported); 30-day smoking abstinence at 6-week follow-up (self-reported); acceptability of the SCAMPI programme; and their satisfaction with using SCAMPI programme.
Conclusions:
If the SCAMPI programme is shown to be effective and acceptable, we will conduct the main trial with a greater sample size and longer follow-up (6 months) to determine if it is an effective social network-based tool to support Chinese male smokers to quit smoking. The results of the pilot study will provide knowledge of how users interact with the programme in real-life context and inform the further development of the programme. Clinical Trial: This trial is registered with the ChiCTR registry (ChiCTR1800020434) and ANZCTR registry (12618001089224).
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.