Martina Schröter

Implementation of a smoking cessation treatment integrity protocol: Treatment discriminability, potency and manual adherence

Testing manual adherence and treatment discriminability and potency have become increasingly important to ensuring the internal validity of treatment studies [Moncher, F.J., & Prinz, R.J., (1991). Treatment fidelity in outcome studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 11, 247-266.]. The objective of this study was therefore to implement the treatment integrity protocol based on the standardized framework proposed by Waltz, Addis, Koerner and Jacobson [Waltz, J., Addis, M.E., Koerner, K., & Jacobson, N.S., (1993). Testing the integrity of a psychotherapy protocol: Assessment of adherence and competence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 61, 620-630.] to assess manual adherence and treatment discriminability and potency in a smoking cessation trial. Audio recordings of 15, 6-week smoking cessation groups were randomly selected from a sample of 31 groups and were rated for treatment integrity. Findings offered partial evidence for manual adherence which did not differ according to treatment condition. Analyses also indicated that the treatments were potent yet not highly discriminable across conditions. Despite some challenges, this preliminary application of the Waltz et al. [Waltz, J., Addis, M.E., Koerner, K., & Jacobson, N.S., (1993). Testing the integrity of a psychotherapy protocol: Assessment of adherence and competence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 61, 620-630.] protocol indicated that it is a promising and flexible tool that may be used to examine different aspects of treatment integrity.

Development and validation of a cluster‐based classification system to facilitate treatment tailoring

Aims: The objectives of this study were to replicate smoker profiles identified in Batra et al. (in press) and to develop a cluster‐based classification system to categorize new cases into smoker profiles so that an appropriate tailored intervention could be applied.

Validity of the timeline followback among treatment-seeking smokers in Germany

Few studies have assessed the convergent validity of the timeline followback for smoking (TLFB-S) among treatment-seeking smokers, and there are no studies assessing its discriminant validity. Further, no studies to date have documented the psychometric properties of the TLFB in the German population. The aim of this study was therefore to test the convergent and discriminant validity of the TLFB-S among adult, treatment-seeking smokers in Germany. In the context of a smoking cessation trial, participants (N=268) completed sociodemographic, TLFB-S and other, self-aggregated, single-item (SA) smoking measures at pretreatment. During the 12-month posttreatment period, participants completed TLFB-S and biochemically validated SA measures of smoking intensity and abstinence at regular intervals. Discriminant validity analyses showed no significant associations for substance-use and sociodemographic variables and measurement discrepancy between TLFB-S and SA measures of pretreatment smoking intensity. Convergent validity analyses indicated that TLFB-S and SA measures of smoking intensity were in high agreement at both pretreatment and posttreatment. Finally, there was high concordance between TLFB-S and SA measures of abstinence at both 1- and 12-month posttreatment. This study replicated and extended the current literature on the TLFB and showed that, even across cultures, it can be a valid measure of various smoking-related variables.