Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Feb 3:14:5.
doi: 10.1186/s12971-016-0070-2. eCollection 2016.

Non-responders in a quitline evaluation are more likely to be smokers - a drop-out and long-term follow-up study of the Swedish National Tobacco Quitline

Eva Nohlert  1 , John Öhrvik  2 , Ásgeir R Helgason  3
Affiliations

Non-responders in a quitline evaluation are more likely to be smokers - a drop-out and long-term follow-up study of the Swedish National Tobacco Quitline

Eva Nohlert et al. Tob Induc Dis. .

Abstract

Background: A previous randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Swedish National Tobacco Quitline detected no significant differences in smoking cessation outcomes between proactive and reactive services at 12-month follow-up. However, the response rate was only 59 % and non-responders were over-represented in the proactive service. We performed a drop-out analysis to assess the smoking status of initial responders and non-responders.

Methods: At 29-48 months after the first call, a postal questionnaire with six questions was sent to 150 random clients from the RCT database, with equal numbers from the proactive and reactive services as well as responders and non-responders at 12-month follow-up. Clients who did not return the questionnaire were contacted by telephone. The outcome measures were point prevalence (PP) and 6-month continuous abstinence (CA), and their associations with response status at 12 months were assessed by logistic regression.

Results: The response rate was 74 % (111/150). Abstinence was significantly higher among initial responders than non-responders (PP 54 % vs. 32 %, p = .023 and CA 49 % vs. 21 %, p = .003). The odds ratios for initial responders vs. initial non-responders were, for PP = 2.5 (95 % CI 1.1-5.6, p = .024), and for CA = 3.7 (95 % CI 1.5-8.9, p = .004), after adjusting for proactive/reactive service.

Conclusions: Non-responders to a 12-month follow-up smoking cessation questionnaire in a quitline setting were more likely to be smokers 1.5-3 years later. We propose a conservative correction factor of 0.8 for self-reported abstinence in telephone-based cessation studies if the response rate is approximately 55-65 %.

Keywords: Effectiveness; Intention-to-treat; Non-response; Per protocol; Proactive; Questionnaire; Reactive; Responder-only analysis; Smoking; Telephone.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flowchart illustrating the process followed in the RCT and the drop-out study. Clients were included from February 2009 to September 2010. The drop-out study was performed in February to March 2013
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization . WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2011.
    1. Swedish National Public Health Survey - Health on Equal Terms, 2014 [Internet]. Folkhälsomyndigheten [Public Health Agency of Sweden]. 2015 [cited January 22, 2015]. Available from: http://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/amnesomraden/statistik-och-undersokni....
    1. The National Board of Health and Welfare . Register data of the harmful effects of tobacco smoking. Stockholm: Socialstyrelsen [The National Board of Health and Welfare]; 2014.
    1. Fiore MC, Jaén CR, Baker TB, Bailey WC, Benowitz NL, Curry SJ, et al. Treating tobacco use and dependence: 2008 update. Clinical practice guideline. Rockville: U.S. Department of Health and Human Service. Public Health Service; 2008.
    1. Stead LF, Hartmann-Boyce J, Perera R, Lancaster T. Telephone counselling for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013;8:CD002850. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources