Detour: a Smartphone Game to Help Youth Quit Smoking

NCT06675526 | Recruiting DMC

• 3 other identifiers: Detour12946KA154-YOU-000100302
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 604
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The researchers are testing a mobile game (named Detour) to support smoking cessation in adolescents and young adults (16-25 years). The game will be tested in a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) where Detour is tested against a digital self-help brochure ("Jouw eigen plan om te stoppen met roken" \[in English: Your personal plan to quit smoking\]) as the active control group. The researchers will recruit 604 participants (aged 16-25) and randomly assign them to receive the game or brochure intervention. The duration between pre-test and post-test for both groups is 5 weeks during which participants can access (parts of) their respective intervention. All participants quit smoking at the end of week 1 of the intervention period. Data is collected on smoking behaviour, intervention usage, and emotional well-being.

Conditions

Smoking Cessation; Smoking Reduction; Adolescent Behavior; Social Behavior

Keywords

Behaviour change; Game intervention; Peer influence; Smoking cessation; Youth

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Smoking abstinence

  The primary outcome measure will be 14-day point prevalence abstinence (yes/no) at six month follow-up i.e. 6 months from quit date.

  6 month follow-up

Secondary Outcomes (2)

• Smoking abstinence

  immediate post-test after 5-week intervention period

• Weekly smoking

  pre-test, immediate post-test after 5-week intervention period, 3-month follow-up, and 6-month follow-up

Study Arms (2)

Detour

EXPERIMENTAL

Participants have access to Detour for 5 weeks encompassing various elements: (1) Completing a stop plan during the initial week preceding the quit attempt. (2) Engaging in ecological momentary assessments, measuring affect, nicotine withdrawal, and smoking behavior during the first two weeks: one week prior to and one week post quit attempt. (3) Accessing the game for a duration of 4 weeks following the quit attempt. (4) Participating in the social shell, in which participants join private social media channels on Instagram and/or TikTok for the entirety of the intervention period.

Behavioral: Detour

Digital self-help material

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Participants receive a self-help digital brochure, "Jouw eigen plan om te stoppen met roken" for smoking cessation in the control group. They will read this on personal demand.

Behavioral: Self-help brochure

Interventions

Detour BEHAVIORAL

"Detour" is a mobile game designed to assist youth with smoking cessation. First, Detour targets stimuli devaluation using a gamified go/no-go training. Second, the researchers aimed to reduce delay discounting in two ways; 1) players can replace neutral images in the go/no-go training with positive images from their own lives related to their future self; 2) players can set and monitor personal goals via the game, to promote future-self priming. Third, participants join a social shell comprising Instagram and TikTok content to provide psychoeducation about quitting smoking and to interact with fellow players who quit simultaneously. Finally, the timing and content of in-game messaging is personalized to each participant based on information provided in an ecological momentary assessment component and a stop plan filled out during the week before the quit attempt.

Detour

Self-help brochure BEHAVIORAL

The brochure provides guidelines to independently design a stop-plan including questions about seeking support from others, strategies to fight cravings, and setting rewards for milestones after quitting. Participants will be encouraged to complete this stop-plan in week 0 of the intervention, so the week before quit day. Additionally, the brochure includes psychoeducational information that is valuable when planning to quit smoking.

Digital self-help material

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 16 Years - 25 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64)

You may qualify if:

• aged 16 to 25 years
• smokes at least weekly
• motivated to quit smoking (participants should answer "misschien", "waarschijnlijk" or "heel erg" to the question are you motivated to quit smoking at this specific moment?).
• installed Detour application; only applicable for participants assigned to the game intervention group.

You may not qualify if:

• younger than 16 or older than 25
• smoke less than once a week
• not motivated to quit smoking are not eligible for this study i.e. participants who answered "helemaal niet"/"not at all") or "onwaarschijnlijk"/"unlikely" to the question are you motivated to quit smoking at this specific moment?).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Behavioural Science Institute: lead
• Erasmus Medical Center: collaborator
• Stichting Trimbos-Instituut: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Radboud University

Nijmegen, Gelderland, 6525 GD, Netherlands

RECRUITING

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Smoking Cessation; Smoking Reduction; Adolescent Behavior; Social Behavior

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Health Behavior; Behavior; Smoking

Study Officials

• Maartje Luijten, PhD

  Radboud University Medical Center

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

Maartje Luijten, PhD

CONTACT

+31 647949807; maartje.luijten2@ru.nl

Hanneke Scholten, PhD

CONTACT

+31 623721158; h.scholten@erasmusmc.nl

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Model Details: A two-armed RCT (Detour vs digital self-help material to quit smoking as the control group) will be conducted to test the efficacy of Detour. All participants fill out Qualtrics questionnaires comprising self-report measures at screening, pre-test, post-test, 3-month follow-up, and 6-month follow-up. In addition, participants in the game group answer some questions in the mobile application, participant in-game behaviour (such as time spent playing) is measured, and text-data from the player chat room and social shell will be used.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: July 4, 2024
• First Posted: November 5, 2024
• Study Start: July 5, 2024
• Primary Completion: December 31, 2025
• Study Completion (Estimated): August 31, 2026
• Last Updated: November 8, 2024

Record last verified: 2024-11

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: Once the associated paper is published, anonymised data will be made openly available via the project page on OSF (https://osf.io/k784a/) with no end date.

Locations

NL (1)