Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
  • Publication
    Efficacy of a web- and text messaging-based intervention to reduce problem drinking in adolescents: Results of a cluster-randomised controlled trial
    (American Psychological Association, 2017-02)
    Haug, Severin
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    Paz Castro, Raquel
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    Dey, Michelle
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    Schaub, Michael
    Objective: To test the efficacy of a combined web- and text messaging-based intervention to reduce problem drinking in young people compared to assessment only. Method: Two-arm, parallel-group, cluster-randomized controlled trial with assessments at baseline and 6-month follow up. The automated intervention included online feedback, based on the social norms approach, and individually tailored text messages addressing social norms, outcome expectations, motivation, self-efficacy, and planning processes, provided over 3 months. The main outcome criterion was the prevalence of risky single-occasion drinking (RSOD, defined as drinking at least 5 standard drinks on a single occasion in men and 4 in women) in the past 30 days. Irrespective of alcohol consumption, 1,355 students from 80 Swiss vocational and upper secondary school classes, all of whom owned a mobile phone, were invited to participate in the study. Of these, 1,041 (76.8%) students participated in the study. Results: Based on intention-to-treat analyses, RSOD prevalence decreased by 5.9% in the intervention group and increased by 2.6% in the control group, relative to that of baseline assessment (odds ratio [OR] = 0.62, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.44–0.87). No significant group differences were observed for the following secondary outcomes: RSOD frequency, quantity of alcohol consumed, estimated peak blood alcohol concentration, and overestimation of peer drinking norms. Conclusions: The intervention program reduced RSOD, which is a major indicator of problem drinking in young people, effectively.
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    Scopus© Citations 58
  • Publication
    A Mobile Phone-Based Life Skills Training Program for Substance Use Prevention Among Adolescents: Pre-Post Study on the Acceptance and Potential Effectiveness of the Program, Ready4life
    ( 2017)
    Haug, Severin
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    Paz Castro, Raquel
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    Meyer, Christian
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    Schaub, Michael P
    Background: Substance use and misuse often first emerge during adolescence. Generic life skills training that is typically conducted within the school curriculum is effective at preventing the onset and escalation of substance use among adolescents. However, the dissemination of such programs is impeded by their large resource requirements in terms of personnel, money, and time. Life skills training provided via mobile phones might be a more economic and scalable approach, which additionally matches the lifestyle and communication habits of adolescents. Objective: The aim of this study was to test the acceptance and initial effectiveness of an individually tailored mobile phone–based life skills training program in vocational school students. Methods: The fully automated program, named ready4life, is based on social cognitive theory and addresses self-management skills, social skills, and substance use resistance skills. Program participants received up to 3 weekly text messages (short message service, SMS) over 6 months. Active program engagement was stimulated by interactive features such as quiz questions, message- and picture-contests, and integration of a friendly competition with prizes in which program users collected credits with each interaction. Generalized estimating equation (GEE) analyses were used to investigate for changes between baseline and 6-month follow-up in the following outcomes: perceived stress, self-management skills, social skills, at-risk alcohol use, tobacco smoking, and cannabis use. Results: The program was tested in 118 school classes at 13 vocational schools in Switzerland. A total of 1067 students who owned a mobile phone and were not regular cigarette smokers were invited to participate in the life skills program. Of these, 877 (82.19%, 877/1067; mean age=17.4 years, standard deviation [SD]=2.7; 58.3% females) participated in the program and the associated study. A total of 43 students (4.9%, 43/877) withdrew their program participation during the intervention period. The mean number of interactive program activities that participants engaged in was 15.5 (SD 13.3) out of a total of 39 possible activities. Follow-up assessments were completed by 436 of the 877 (49.7%) participants. GEE analyses revealed decreased perceived stress (odds ratio, OR=0.93; 95% CI 0.87-0.99; P=.03) and increases in several life skills addressed between baseline and the follow-up assessment. The proportion of adolescents with at-risk alcohol use declined from 20.2% at baseline to 15.5% at follow-up (OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.53-0.93; P=.01), whereas no significant changes were obtained for tobacco (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.65-1.36; P=.76) or cannabis use (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.67-1.24; P=.54). Conclusions: These results reveal high-level acceptance and promising effectiveness of this interventional approach, which could be easily and economically implemented. A reasonable next step would be to test the efficacy of this program within a controlled trial.
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  • Publication
    Engagement Within a Mobile Phone–Based Smoking Cessation Intervention for Adolescents and its Association With Participant Characteristics and Outcomes
    (Healthcare World, 2017-11)
    Paz Castro, Raquel
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    Haug, Severin
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    ; ;
    Schaub, Michael P
    Background: Although mobile phone–delivered smoking cessation programs are a promising way to promote smoking cessation among adolescents, little is known about how adolescents might actually use them. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine adolescents’ trajectories of engagement with a mobile phone–delivered smoking cessation program over time and the associations these trajectories have with baseline characteristics and treatment outcomes. Methods: We performed secondary data analysis on a dataset from a study that compared a mobile phone–delivered integrated smoking cessation and alcohol intervention with a smoking cessation only intervention for adolescents recruited in vocational and upper secondary school classes (N=1418). Throughout the 3-month intervention, participants in both intervention groups received one text message prompt per week that either assessed smoking-related target behaviors or encouraged participation in a quiz or a message contest. Sequence analyses were performed to identify engagement trajectories. Analyses were conducted to identify predictors of engagement trajectory and associations between engagement trajectories and treatment outcomes. Results: Three engagement trajectories emerged: (1) stable engagement (646/1418, 45.56%), (2) decreasing engagement (501/1418, 35.33%), and (3) stable nonengagement (271/1418, 19.11%). Adolescents who were younger, had no immigrant background, perceived more benefits of quitting smoking, and reported binge drinking preceding the baseline assessment were more likely to exhibit stable engagement. Due to different reach of more engaged and less engaged participants at follow-up, three statistical models (complete-cases, last-observation-carried-forward, and multiple imputation) for the associations of engagement trajectory and smoking outcome were tested. For 7-point smoking abstinence, no association was revealed to be statistically significant over all three models. However, decreasing engagement with the program was associated over all three models, with greater reductions in daily tobacco use than nonengagement. Conclusions: The majority of tobacco-smoking adolescents engaged extensively with a mobile phone–based smoking cessation program. However, not only stable engagement but also decreasing engagement with a program might be an indicator of behavioral change. Measures to avoid nonengagement among adolescents appear especially necessary for older smokers with an immigrant background who do not drink excessively. In addition, future studies should not only examine the use of specific program components but also users’ engagement trajectories to better understand the mechanisms behind behavioral change.
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    Scopus© Citations 21
  • Publication
    Moderators of outcome in a technology-based intervention to prevent and reduce problem drinking among adolescents
    (Elsevier Science, 2017)
    Paz Castro, Raquel
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    Haug, Severin
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    Schaub, Michael P.
    Introduction Moderators of outcome are investigated in a technology-based intervention that has been shown to effectively reduce binge drinking among adolescents. Methods Secondary data analyses were performed on socio-demographic, health-related, and socio-cognitive moderators of intervention efficacy. Students attending 80 vocational and upper secondary school classes with different levels of alcohol use were randomized to either a web- and text messaging-based intervention (n = 547) or an assessment-only control group (n = 494). Moderators of outcome were analysed across the entire sample, and separately for lower-risk and higher-risk drinkers. Results Based on an intention-to-treat analysis, we identified smoking status and educational level to moderate the intervention effectiveness across the total sample and in the lower-risk subsample, with a greater reduction in binge-drinking prevalence in smokers versus non-smokers, and in more highly-educated versus less-educated adolescents. Conclusions Technology-based interventions targeting heavy drinking might be especially effective in smokers and highly-educated adolescents. Interventions can prevent low-risk drinkers that smoke from developing a problematic alcohol use.
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    Scopus© Citations 14
  • Publication
    Text-based Healthcare Chatbots Supporting Patient and Health Professional Teams: Preliminary Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial on Childhood Obesity
    ( 2017-08-27) ;
    Nißen, Marcia
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    Shih, Chen-Hsuan Iris
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    Rüegger, Dominik
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    Künzler, Florian
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    Barata, Filipe
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    Büchter, Dirk
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    Brogle, Björn
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    Heldt, Katrin
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    Gindrat, Pauline
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    Farpour-Lambert, Nathalie
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    l’Allemand, Dagmar
    Health professionals have limited resources and are not able to personally monitor and support patients in their everyday life. Against this background and due to the increasing number of self-service channels and digital health interventions, we investigate how text-based healthcare chatbots (THCB) can be designed to effectively support patients and health professionals in therapeutic settings beyond on-site consultations. We present an open source THCB system and how the THCP was designed for a childhood obesity intervention. Preliminary results with 15 patients indicate promising results with respect to intervention adherence (ca. 13.000 conversational turns over the course of 4 months or ca. 8 per day and patient), scalability of the THCB approach (ca. 99.5% of all conversational turns were THCB-driven) and over-average scores on perceived enjoyment and attachment bond between patient and THCB. Future work is discussed.
  • Publication
    Design and Lab Experiment of a Stress Detection Service based on Mouse Movements
    ( 2017-09-04) ;
    Wahle, Fabian
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    Workplace stress can negatively affect the health condition of employees and with it, the performance of organizations. Although there exist approaches to measure work-related stress, two major limitations are the low resolution of stress data and its obtrusive measurement. The current work applies design science research with the goal to design, implement and evaluate a Stress Detection Service (SDS) that senses the degree of work-related stress solely based on mouse movements of knowledge workers. Using van Gemmert and van Galen’s stress theory and Bakker and Demerouti’s Job Demands-Resource model as justificatory knowledge, we implemented a first SDS prototype that senses mouse movements and perceived stress levels. Experimental results indicate that two feature sets of mouse movements, i.e. average deviation from an optimal mouse trajectory and average mouse speed, can classify high versus low stress with an overall accuracy of 78%. Future work regarding a second build-and-evaluate loop of a SDS, then tailored to the field setting, is discussed.
  • Publication
    Personal MobileCoach: Tailoring Behavioral Interventions to the Needs of Individual Participants
    MobileCoach, an open source behavioral intervention platform, has been developed to provide health professionals with an authoring tool to design evidence-based, scalable and low-cost digital health interventions (DHI). Its potential meets the lack in resources and capacity of health care systems to provide DHI for the treatment of noncommunicable diseases. In the current work, we introduce the first personalization approach for MobileCoach with the purpose of identifying the needs of participants, tailoring the treatment and, as a consequence, enhancing the capability of MobileCoach-based DHIs. The personalization approach is then exemplified by a very first prototype of a DHI for people with asthma that is able to detect coughing by just using a smartphone’s microphone. First empirical results with five healthy subjects and 80 coughs indicate its technical feasibility as the detection accuracy yielded 83.3%. Future work will focus on the integration of personalized sensing and supporting applications for MobileCoach.
    Scopus© Citations 6
  • Publication
    MobileCoach: A Novel Open Source Platform for the Design of Evidence-based, Scalable and Low-Cost Behavioral Health Interventions - Overview and Preliminary Evaluation in the Public Health Context
    (IEEE, 2015-04-15) ; ;
    Haug, Severin
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    Wahle, Fabian
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    Staake, Thorsten
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    Effective and efficient behavioral interventions are important and of high interest today. Due to shortcomings of related approaches, we introduce MobileCoach (mobile-coach.eu) as novel open source behavioral intervention platform. With its modular architecture, its rule-based engine that monitors behavioral states and triggers state transitions, we assume MobileCoach to lay a fruitful ground for evidence-based, scalable and low-cost behavioral interventions in various application domains. The code basis is made open source and thus, MobileCoach can be used and revised not only by interdisciplinary research teams but also by public bodies or business organizations without any legal constraints. Technical details of the platform are presented as well as preliminary empirical findings regarding the acceptance of one particular intervention in the public health context. Future work will integrate Internet of Things services that sense and process data streams in a way that MobileCoach interventions can be further tailored to the needs and characteristics of individual participants.
    Scopus© Citations 37
  • Publication
    Towards Short-Term Detection of Job Strain in Knowledge Workers with a Minimal-Invasive Information System Service: Theoretical Foundation and Experimental Design
    (Association for Information Systems, 2015-05-25) ;
    Wahle, Fabian
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    Haug, Severin
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    Jenny, Gregor
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    Bauer, Georg F.
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    Early detection and tailored treatment of job strain is important because it negatively affects the health condition of employees, the performance of organizations, and the overall costs of the health care system likewise. Although there exist several self-report instruments for measuring job strain, one major limitation is the low frequency of measurements and, related to it, high-effort and high-costs associated with each wave of data collection. As a result and significant shortcoming, short-term epi-sodes of high job strain with serious negative outcomes cannot be identified reliably. The current research aims therefore to design, implement and evaluate a Job Strain Information System Service (JSISS) that continuously senses the degree of physiological job strain in knowledge workers solely based on mouse interactions. The following questions guide this research endeavour: (1) Which properties of an employee’s motor activity measured by mouse interactions are significantly related to the degree of physiological job strain? (2) Is physiological job strain related to self-reported psychological job strain? This research adopts the Job Demands-Resource model and the stress theory of van Gemmert and van Galen (1997) and proposes a lab experiment to answer the two research questions and thus, to examine the overall utility of the JSISS.