Use of an online smoking cessation community promotes abstinence: results of propensity score weighting
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: We estimated the causal effects of use of an online smoking cessation community on 30-day point prevalence abstinence at 3 months. METHODS: Participants (N = 492) were adult current smokers in the enhanced Internet arm of The iQUITT Study, a randomized trial of Internet and telephone treatment for smoking cessation. All participants accessed a Web-based smoking-cessation program that included a large, established online community. Automated tracking metrics of passive (e.g., reading forum posts, viewing member profiles) and active (e.g., writing forum posts, sending private messages) community use were extracted from the site at 3 months. Self-selected community use defines the groups of interest: "None," "Passive," and "Both" (passive + active). Inverse probability of treatment weighting corrected for baseline imbalances on demographic, smoking, psychosocial, and medical history variables. Propensity weights estimated via generalized boosted models were used to calculate Average Treatment Effects (ATE) and Average Treatment effects on the Treated (ATT). RESULTS: Patterns of community use were: None = 198 (40.2%), Passive = 110 (22.4%), and Both = 184 (37.4%). ATE-weighted abstinence rates were: None = 4.2% (95% CI = 1.5-6.9); Passive = 15.1% (95% CI = 8.4-21.9); Both = 20.4% (95% CI = 13.9-26.8). ATT-weighted abstinence rates indicated even greater benefits of community use. CONCLUSIONS: Community users were more likely to quit smoking at 3 months than nonusers. The estimated benefit from use of online community resources was even larger among subjects with high propensity to use them. No differences in abstinence emerged between passive and passive/active users. Results suggest that lurking in online communities confers specific abstinence benefits. Implications of these findings for online cessation communities are discussed.
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DBCIs have the potential to generate datasets sufficiently large to reliably model and experimentally test mediation of outcomes by engagement with particular intervention components and to statistically control for confounding moderator effects such as baseline motivation levels.
“DBCIs have the potential to generate datasets sufficiently large to be able to reliably model and experimentally test 34 mediation of outcomes by engagement with particular intervention components and to statistically control for confounding moderator effects such as baseline motivation levels.22,26,35,36”
From Understanding and Promoting Effective Engagement With Digital Behavior Change Interventions (2016) · cites this paper as [26]
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- Authors
- Graham, A. L., Papandonatos, G. D., Erar, B., & Stanton, C. A.
- Affiliations
- Truth Initiative (US)
- Brown University (US)
- Westat (United States) (US)
- Venue
- Health Psychology
- Published
- 2015-12
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- Suppl
- Pages
- 1286-1295
- ISSN
- 0278-6133 (ISSN-L)
- 1930-7810
- PMC
- PMC4681311
- OpenAlex
- W2409227394
- Cited by
- 40
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 4.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Health Psychology (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Cancer Institute (R01CA104836)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Smoking Behavior and Cessation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Keywords
- smoking cessation, abstinence, causal effect estimation, propensity score weighting, generalized boosted models
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Residence Characteristics, Smoking, Telephone, Smoking Cessation, Internet, Propensity Score
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