Young Adults' Responses to Anti-smoking Messages

Smoking Clinical Trial

Official title:

Young Adults' Anti-smoking Message Ratings and Ideas About Smoking Survey

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT01954407
• Other study ID #: 818764
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: September 26, 2013
• Last updated: June 13, 2017
• Start date: September 2013
• Est. completion date: December 2013

Study information

• Verified date: June 2017
• Source: University of Pennsylvania
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The purpose of this study is to determine whether anti-smoking messages based on promising smoking-related beliefs increase anti-smoking intentions more than messages based on less-promising beliefs. Never smokers and former smokers will be randomly assigned to view different anti-smoking messages, and will answer questions measuring smoking-related beliefs, intentions, and message ratings online.

Description:

The goal of the main study is to test the hypothesis that messages promoting promising smoking-related belief themes identified by the Hornik and Woolf (1999) method will increase anti-smoking intentions to a greater extent than less-promising belief themes. This hypothesis will be tested by exposing research participants to messages based on a range of belief themes and comparing their anti-smoking intentions across conditions. Using the method described by Hornik and Woolf (1999), promising and less-promising smoking-related beliefs are identified using cross-sectional survey data that examines the association between smoking-related beliefs and intentions. The research team has previously used this method to advise campaign developers as to which smoking-related beliefs they should target in anti-smoking campaigns, although our cross-sectional evidence was only suggestive because it could not tease apart the causal order of beliefs and intentions (i.e., do people with anti-smoking beliefs have intentions not to smoke, or do people who don't intend to smoke develop more anti-smoking beliefs). Because our evidence has been cross-sectional, it is currently unknown whether anti-smoking messages based on promising smoking-related beliefs are indeed more likely to increase intentions not to smoke. Therefore, there are two parts to the study that we will conduct experimentally. First, in the pilot study, we will pretest a larger set of themes than will be used in the main study to ensure that the themes we do use (whether promising or unpromising) are equally convincing. Otherwise, there may be a difference in intentions based on treatment group simply because the manipulation did not work in one group and did in another, not because holding promising beliefs is actually more effective at increasing intentions. Our claim is that if it were possible to convince people of both types of beliefs (promising and less-promising), they would be less likely to smoke in the promising case than in the less-promising case because those beliefs are more powerful at changing intentions. For the main study, we will therefore use a smaller set of themes and experimentally manipulate which respondents are exposed to promising smoking-related messages and which are exposed to less-promising smoking-related messages. We expect that the randomly assigned groups will endorse promising and less-promising smoking-related beliefs to different extents. This will allow us to test our hypothesis that promising beliefs are more effective at increasing anti-smoking intentions by examining differences in smoking-related intentions based on treatment group (exposure to either promising or less-promising messages).

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 2200
• Est. completion date: December 2013
• Est. primary completion date: December 2013
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 25 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• U.S. participants 18-25 years of age who are part of the Survey Sampling International (SSI) panel

• Never smoker (never puffed a cigarette) or former smoker (have at least puffed a cigarette but have not smoked in the past 30 days)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Less than 18 or greater than 25 years of age

• For the main study, they must not have participated in the pilot study in which we will test the how convincing these messages are

• For both studies, they must not have participated in a previous study in which we originally generated these theme sets

• Current smokers (people who have smoked in the past 30 days)

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Smoking

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Smoking-Related Messages

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Pennsylvania	National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Smoking Intentions	Respondents answer three items (to create a scale) about the likelihood of using various tobacco products over the next year.	1 day
Primary	Smoking-related beliefs	Respondents will answer five smoking-related belief items (to create a scale) that are relevant to the messages they saw in addition to other smoking-related belief items. They will answer how likely/unlikely they think the beliefs are as a result of smoking (or not smoking).	1 day