Prevention in a Virtual Community Game
Condition: Tabagism
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The main objective of the SCOTT project is to reduce tobacco experimentation of teenagers
      through an online intervention based on social networking and empowerment of users.

      Specific objectives of this emerging project are : 1. To develop or identify an online
      community dedicated to teenagers where the investigators will develop anti-smoking skills and
      norms. It will be based on social cognitive theory and will combine multiple functionalities
      based on the current practices and preferences of adolescents on internet and mobile;
      ensuring user safety, regulatory and ethical issues ; 2. To analyse the adoption, acceptance
      and the usability of SCOTT among users in a limited scale 3.To develop SCOTT process and
      impact assessment methodology.

      Research hypothesis Providing access to prevention in an online community will: 1) Strengthen
      anti-smoking skills 2) Enhance the empowerment of users 3) Allow the implementation of health
      interventions 4) Improve indicators of tobacco consumption in young people Methods The
      overall methodology of the project relies on a multidisciplinary approach with a consortium
      of French experts in public health (health promotion and epidemiology), education science,
      information and communication technologies, medical informatics, adolescent medicine,
      adolescent addictology, social sciences, ethics and law. The project will be led in 3 parts:
      1) Development of the intervention - using the Integrate, Design, Assess, and Share (IDEAS)
      framework. Using qualitative methods (individual interview, focus groups), multidisciplinary
      team brainstorming, works meeting and quantitative assessment of SCOTT quality; the
      investigators will (a) empathize with target users, (b) specify target behavior, (c) ground
      in behavioral theory, (d) ideate implementation strategies, (e) prototype potential products,
      (f) gather user feedback, (g) build a minimum viable product, 2) Pilot study : (h) SCOTT will
      be deploying on a small scale to assess its usability; 3) Development of the large-scale
      evaluation protocol - following the recommendations of the Medical Research Council
      concerning the evaluation of complex interventions. The investigators will (i) develop, based
      on the results of the pilot test, the SCOTT process evaluation methodology, (j) develop the
      SCOTT impact / effectiveness evaluation methodology.
    

Detailed description: 
      Scientific context The SCOTT project stems from the "m-Health" Initiative launched in 2012 by
      the WHO and the International Telecommunication Union for the fight against non-communicable
      diseases (NCDs). The project is based on: 1) In 2014, in France, a third of high school
      students of all ages said they had already had the opportunity to smoke a cigarette. Smoking
      cigarettes is multiplied by 5 during the high school years, with one student in two who has
      already smoked at least once a cigarette in the last year. 2) In France the rate of computer
      equipment is 97% in the 12-17 and 81% have smartphones. Teenagers of 11-14 are 67% to have a
      social network account that they used mainly to watch videos, chat with friends and family
      and publish and share 3) Essential elements of risk-taking prevention programs for
      adolescents have been identified: using social behavior theories; using interactive
      skill-building methods, focusing on the social influences that encourage behavior, including
      peers and the media; offering multiple-component interventions; including a strong peer
      education or support component.

      Objectives The main objective of the SCOTT project is to reduce tobacco experimentation of
      teenagers through an online intervention based on social networking and empowerment of users.

      Specific objectives of this emerging project are : 1. To develop or identify an online
      community dedicated to teenagers where the investogators will develop anti-smoking skills and
      norms. It will be based on social cognitive theory and will combine multiple functionalities
      based on the current practices and preferences of adolescents on internet and mobile;
      ensuring user safety, regulatory and ethical issues ; 2. To analyse the adoption, acceptance
      and the usability of SCOTT among users in a limited scale 3.To develop SCOTT process and
      impact assessment methodology.

      Research hypothesis Providing access to prevention in an online community will: 1) Strengthen
      anti-smoking skills 2) Enhance the empowerment of users 3) Allow the implementation of health
      interventions 4) Improve indicators of tobacco consumption in young people Methods The
      overall methodology of the project relies on a multidisciplinary approach with a consortium
      of French experts in public health (health promotion and epidemiology), education science,
      information and communication technologies, medical informatics, adolescent medicine,
      adolescent addictology, social sciences, ethics and law. The project will be led in 3 parts:
      1) Development of the intervention - using the Integrate, Design, Assess, and Share (IDEAS)
      framework. Using qualitative methods (individual interview, focus groups), multidisciplinary
      team brainstorming, works meeting and quantitative assessment of SCOTT quality; the
      investigators will (a) empathize with target users, (b) specify target behavior, (c) ground
      in behavioral theory, (d) ideate implementation strategies, (e) prototype potential products,
      (f) gather user feedback, (g) build a minimum viable product, 2) Pilot study : (h) SCOTT will
      be deploying on a small scale to assess its usability; 3) Development of the large-scale
      evaluation protocol - following the recommendations of the Medical Research Council
      concerning the evaluation of complex interventions. The investigators will (i) develop, based
      on the results of the pilot test, the SCOTT process evaluation methodology, (j) develop the
      SCOTT impact / effectiveness evaluation methodology.

      Expected public health impact Risk behaviors that appear in adolescence explain 17% of the
      total burden of disease -mainly non-communicable diseases. With SCOTT young people will gain
      greater control of their state of health and well-being through proactive, participatory and
      informative aspects of our project. Empowerment and acquisition of resilience skills will
      minimise the risk factors of risk behaviors, especially smoking.

      Perspectives 1. To deploy and evaluate at the national level SCOTT's effectiveness in
      reducing experimentation and regular tobacco use among college students 2. To use data for
      public health research on adolescents' health and well-being in order to strengthen research
      towards e-health and m-health evidence using data collected from the platform and by the
      implementation of surveys and interventional studies.
    

Intervention name(s): Behavioral
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): The intervention group will benefit from discussion sessions on tobacco within the virtual world, with a group of pairs and 2 facilitators (public health researchers).
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Primary prevention; Adolescents; Internet; Empowerment; Community participation