Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Aug 23, 2023
Date Accepted: Jul 1, 2024
Examining quitting experiences on quit-vaping subreddits from 2015-2021: A content analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite the prevalence of vaping nicotine, most nicotine cessation research remains focused on smoking cigarettes. However, the lived experience of quitting smoking is different from quitting vaping. As a result, research examining the unique experiences of those quitting vaping can better inform quitting resources and cessation programs specific to e-cigarette use.
Objective:
To examine content across quit vaping subreddits since their inception to better understand quitting vaping within the context of the expanding nicotine market.
Methods:
All posts from January 2015 to October 2021 were scraped from quit vaping subreddits: QuittingJuul, QuitVaping, quit_vaping, and stopvaping (N=7,110). Rolling weekly average post volume was calculated. A codebook informed by a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model was developed to characterize themes in a subsample of n=695 randomly selected posts. Frequencies and percentages of posts containing each coded theme were assessed along with the number of upvotes and comments.
Results:
Post volume increased across all subreddits over time, spiking from August – September of 2019 when vaping lung injury emerged. 52.09% of posts discussed seeking social support and 16.83% discussed providing social support. Posts providing support received the most positive engagements (i.e. upvotes) of all coded categories. Posts also discussed physical and psychological symptoms of withdrawal (30.65% and 18.85%, respectively), strategies for quitting including: cold turkey (38.33%), alternative products (17%), and tapering (10.50%). Most posts shared a personal narrative (92.37%) and some discussed quit motivation (28.20%) and relapse (14.99%).
Conclusions:
This work identifies a desire for peer-to-peer support for quitting vaping. It also links demonstrated interest in quitting vaping to tobacco control policy events and highlights characteristics of quitting vaping specific to a changing nicotine product environment. These findings have direct implications for quit vaping product implementation and development.
Citation
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Copyright
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