Evaluating Specific Plans to Increase Smoking Quit Attempts
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Role of Self-Incentives in Smoking Cessation: A Randomised Controlled Trial in Community Based Stop Smoking Services.
IRAS ID
149855
Contact name
Christopher Armitage
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Research summary
Tobacco use is the greatest cause of ill health and early mortality, and smoking is the main contributor to around 75,000 deaths a year in England. The aim of this present research is to test the effect of encouraging people to reward themselves when they have successfully abstained from smoking and the impact this will have on sustained smoking cessation. Ten-stop smoking services will be randomly allocated to one of four independent randomised controlled trials requiring 771 participants within each of these four randomised controlled trials being randomly allocated at baseline to either: (1) a control condition (asked to form a plan to quit smoking but given no further instructions), (2) a volitional help sheet condition (asked to link temptations with appropriate behavioural responses), (3) a weekly self-incentivising condition (asked to reward themselves at the end of each week that they have successfully abstained from smoking), or (4) a monthly self-incentivising condition (asked to reward themselves at the end of each month that they have successfully abstained from smoking). Secondary aims of this research are to explore the best ways to encourage people to use self-incentives effectively, if self-incentivising weekly or monthly provides larger increases in participants quitting smoking, if providing people with healthy examples of self-incentives works better than those who self-generate their own self-incentives, and which of all the self-incentives chosen work best at sustaining this quit attempt at the follow-up time points. These secondary aims will be measured through the four independent randomised controlled trials. The main outcome measure will be smoking status (quit smoking), which will be biochemically measured at the end of the stop smoking program, and through self-reported measures at six-months post quit date.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/NW/1262
Date of REC Opinion
12 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion