Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 16, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 11, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 30, 2023
Predictors of dropout among psychosomatic rehabilitation patients during the COVID-19 pandemic: Secondary analysis of a longitudinal study of digital training
ABSTRACT
Background:
High dropout rates are a common problem reported in online studies. Understanding which risk factors interrelate with dropping out from the studies provides the option to prevent dropout by tailoring effective strategies.
Objective:
This study aims to add understanding to the predictors of online study dropout among psychosomatic rehabilitation patients. Are sociodemographics, physical and mental health, digital use, and COVID-pandemic-related variables determining dropout?
Methods:
Patients (N=2155) were recruited from psychosomatic rehabilitation clinics in Germany and filled in the online questionnaire at T1, which was prior to their rehabilitation stay. Around half of them (1082/2155, 50.2%) dropped out at T2, which was after the rehabilitation stay, during which three voluntary digital trainings were provided to patients. According to the number of trainings that patients participated in, they were defined into a comparison group or intervention groups.
Results:
Comparison groups had the highest dropout rate of 68.4% (173/253), compared to the intervention groups with 48.0% (749/1561), 50.0% (96/192), and 43.0% (64/149) dropout rate. Patients with a diagnosed combined anxiety and depressive disorder had the highest dropout rates of up to 63.5% (47/74). Younger patients (<50 years old) and less educated patients were more likely to drop out of the study. Patients who had less health-related app and/or internet use behaviours were more likely to drop out of the study. Patients who remained in their job, and patients who were infected by the coronavirus were more likely to drop out of the study.
Conclusions:
The predictors of dropout were complex due to different study designs. For online studies with a focus on mental health, it is suggested to provide feedback and tailored training to help patients with a high risk of dropping out overcome difficulties completing the study. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04453475; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/ NCT04453475
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.