New Study Finds Going Online Helps Smokers Quit

College Park, Md. December 4, 2006 For smokers who count kicking the habit as their top 2007 New Years resolution, going online might offer the key to success, according to new research released today from the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business. The study, With a Little Help from Strangers: Social Support and Smoking Cessation in Online Communities, analyzed the effectiveness of Internet support networks in helping smokers quit and found that more than 62 percent of respondents reported they successfully abandoned cigarettes after joining a smoking cessation support community.

According to the American Lung Associations Trends in Tobacco Use, published in January 2006, most smokers in the U.S. say that they want to stop smoking, but 20.9 percent of adults continued to smoke as of 2004. The same report included 2000 National Health Interview Survey information stating that less than 10 percent of smokers have long-term success quitting.

This study shows quantitatively that once you make the decision to quit smoking, joining an online community increases your chances of meeting your goal, said Professor Ritu Agarwal, study co-author and Deans Chair of Information Systems at the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business. On the Web, you can selectively surround yourself with people who offer only positive encouragement. Whereas, real life does not offer a filter button and sometimes friends and family are not as supportive as one would hope.

For the study, Agarwal and her co-author, Smith School PhD graduate Jessie Ma examined the online behavior of 411 Quitnet.com users who were able to get support 24/7 from their quitting buddies by visiting the site and posting on the Web forums.

The members were strangers to one another, but had shared goals and similar experiences, said Agarwal. Study results showed having this large support network and receiving understanding and respect were essential success factors.

Key research findings offer tips to smokers who want to use an online support community for help quitting:

1. Make lots of contacts. The more people community members interacted with, the more likely they were to stay on the straight-and-narrow. Respondents who quit averaged nearly 75 quitting buddies, compared to only about 28 for those who didnt quit.
2. Post often. The more time a member spent on the Web with the community, the less likely he or she would continue smoking. Those who interacted with the online community for 18 months had a better quitting success rate than those who had only been members for five months.
3. Keep at it. The longer someone stayed a community member, the better chance he or she had of continuing in his or her new cigarette-free lifestyle, thanks to the ongoing support of fellow quitters. The 62 percent of members who reported quitting after joining the community had the longest tenure on the site, more than three times as long as those who did not report quitting.
4. Be open and transparent. Members who shared the most about themselves and their struggles to quit felt a greater sense of understanding and identification from fellow community members and had the most success in their quest. Members who quit reported a level of identity consonance their identity perception and how community members acknowledged that identity nearly 20 percent higher than those who didnt quit smoking.

The study was a project of the Smith Schools Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS), an academia-led effort with collaboration from industry and government affiliates, designed to research, analyze and recommend solutions to challenges surrounding the introduction and integration of information and decision technologies into the health care system.