Tailoring Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skill Coaching in the Moment Through Smartphones: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Online interventions may offer unique features to facilitate delivery of ACT, such as ecological momentary assessment for tailoring skill coaching or the ability to track skills practice.

“Online interventions may also offer unique features to facilitate delivery of ACT, such as ecological momentary assessment for tailoring skill coaching (Levin et al., 2019) or the ability to track skills practice (Heffner et al., 2015).”

Levin et al demonstrated a simple EMA strategy for identifying a participant's present-moment psychological flexibility training needs, involving a brief subjective assessment of which process an individual felt they were experiencing the most difficulty with each time they accessed an app-delivered ACT intervention.

“Levin et al [75] demonstrated a simple EMA strategy for identifying a participant’s present-moment psychological flexibility training needs, involving a brief subjective assessment of which process an individual felt they were experiencing the most difficulty with each time they accessed an app-delivered ACT intervention.”

In a 3-arm RCT, compared with a nonindividualized ACT app and a nontreatment group, university students who engaged with the individualized app demonstrated statistically significantly greater improvements in psychological distress and well-being.

“Using a 3-arm RCT, the researchers demonstrated that, compared with a nonindividualized ACT app and a nontreatment group, university students who engaged with the individualized app demonstrated statistically significantly greater improvements in psychological distress and well-being.”

The 5-week intervention duration was appropriate for this study.

“This duration was considered appropriate as Levin et al [75] observed intervention effects for a similar 4-week program, and feasibility trialing of the current app demonstrated that medical students engaged most frequently during the early weeks of access [68].”

App-delivered approaches offer stakeholders a cost-effective scalable intervention option that could reach a large number of students while maintaining relevance to individual needs.

“They also offer stakeholders a cost-effective scalable intervention option that could reach a large number of students [39,64] while maintaining relevance to individual needs [75].”