COMPUTERIZED COMMUNICATION AS A MEDIUM FOR BEHAVIORAL SMOKING CESSATION TREATMENT - CONTROLLED EVALUATION

Most cigarette smokers wish that they did not smoke, find it difficult to quit smoking on their own, but still do not seek face-to-face smoking cessation treatments. In an effort to reach these smokers, an interactive, behavioral, smoking cessation program was offered on the CompuServe computer network. The program tailored treatment to each individual participant's smoking history, progress toward quitting smoking, and responses to questions posed by the computer system. There was a stop smoking forum, which was an ongoing, computer-stored discussion. The 1, 158 participants were randomly dispersed among four groups, in a two-by-two design. Half received the full version of the program, while half received a control version that lacked most features of the full version. Half the subjects had access to the stop smoking forum, and half did not. The results suggested that subjects were more likely to stay in the program when they received the full version of the program. There was also a trend for the full version of the program to bring about higher abstinence rates. Subjects wh o received neither the forum nor the full version had particularly low abstinence rates. © 1990.