Listening to the quit smoking stories of quitters to gain insights into effective quitting strategies and health promotion

Lafontaine, Mayanne

Listening to the quit smoking stories of quitters to gain insights into effective quitting strategies and health promotion

Lafontaine, Mayanne

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2021

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Lafontaine, Mayanne
dc.date.accessioned	2022-06-10T03:32:46Z
dc.date.available	2022-06-10T03:32:46Z
dc.date.issued	2021
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/158053
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	Smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable death and illness in the world. In Australia, the Federal and New South Wales state Governments have implemented a comprehensive program of tobacco control initiatives over several decades that has led to declines in smoking prevalence. Digital interventions have shown promise in supporting smokers in quitting smoking. But evidence of their effectiveness and long-term impact remains low. iCanQuit.com.au is an Australian (New South Wales) quit smoking website that provides a forum for quitters to share their personal stories and experiences of quitting smoking. This research involved studying the publicly available posts shared by users on the iCanQuit forum to identify the strategies that they employed and the extent to which these were successful in supporting quitters to remain smokefree. A two-stage quantitative and qualitative study of quitters who used the iCanQuit forum during their quit attempt was undertaken. The first stage examined a large sample of 372 quitters who posted on the forum in 2012 and 2017. The second stage examined the posts of fifteen quitters from 1 January 2011 to 31 May 2018, who reached smokefree status and were named ‘changemakers’. Four subgroups of users were identified on the forum: ‘newbies’ (quit for 0-3 months), ‘resisters’ (quit for 3-6 months), ‘successful quitters’ (quit for 6-12 months) and ‘long-time quitters’ (quit for more than 12 months). The study found that the iCanQuit forum did indeed support long-term behaviour change. The quit success of ‘changemakers’ was linked to higher rates of participation, front-loading activity and sustained membership of at least one year. Through the behaviours of reading and writing posts, the role of the forum in habit reversal was revealed, as ‘changemakers’ returned years later in response to a craving. A Framework of Insights was designed to encapsulate the value of peer-led online communities which include tangible support, connection, social support, and self-awareness. This Framework affords voice to the users of the iCanQuit forum by articulating the transformative process experienced by users of the forum and the perceived impact the iCanQuit forum has had on quit smoking success.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/158053/2/02whole.pdf
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/ppc
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.title	Listening to the quit smoking stories of quitters to gain insights into effective quitting strategies and health promotion	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

Smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable death and illness in the world. In Australia, the Federal and New South Wales state Governments have implemented a comprehensive program of tobacco control initiatives over several decades that has led to declines in smoking prevalence. Digital interventions have shown promise in supporting smokers in quitting smoking. But evidence of their effectiveness and long-term impact remains low. iCanQuit.com.au is an Australian (New South Wales) quit smoking website that provides a forum for quitters to share their personal stories and experiences of quitting smoking. This research involved studying the publicly available posts shared by users on the iCanQuit forum to identify the strategies that they employed and the extent to which these were successful in supporting quitters to remain smokefree. A two-stage quantitative and qualitative study of quitters who used the iCanQuit forum during their quit attempt was undertaken. The first stage examined a large sample of 372 quitters who posted on the forum in 2012 and 2017. The second stage examined the posts of fifteen quitters from 1 January 2011 to 31 May 2018, who reached smokefree status and were named ‘changemakers’. Four subgroups of users were identified on the forum: ‘newbies’ (quit for 0-3 months), ‘resisters’ (quit for 3-6 months), ‘successful quitters’ (quit for 6-12 months) and ‘long-time quitters’ (quit for more than 12 months). The study found that the iCanQuit forum did indeed support long-term behaviour change. The quit success of ‘changemakers’ was linked to higher rates of participation, front-loading activity and sustained membership of at least one year. Through the behaviours of reading and writing posts, the role of the forum in habit reversal was revealed, as ‘changemakers’ returned years later in response to a craving. A Framework of Insights was designed to encapsulate the value of peer-led online communities which include tangible support, connection, social support, and self-awareness. This Framework affords voice to the users of the iCanQuit forum by articulating the transformative process experienced by users of the forum and the perceived impact the iCanQuit forum has had on quit smoking success.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/158053