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Padlina Oliver - Jimmy Gerda - Bauer Georg

Background

Data from the year 2005 show that 77% of 14 to 19 year-olds in Switzerland used the Internet several times per week. Health professionals thus make increasing use of the Internet to promote health behaviour changes.

Objective

The aim of this study was to analyse user behaviour of an Internet-based smoking prevention programme (www.feelok.ch) in order to optimise the structure of the programme.

Methods

Number and lengths of visits for three different versions of the smoking prevention programme were recorded. Version 1 consisted of two sections: general information in the first and stage-matched feedback in the second section. In order to encourage more visits to the stage-matched intervention, the section with general information was removed for version 2. The resulting decrease in the number of visits made it necessary to reintegrate a section with general information into the smoking prevention programme (version 2.1). However, to avoid shortcomings of version 1, the structure of the home page of the programme was slightly changed.

Results

In version 1, where the general and stage-specific information on smoking were presented as two distinct sections, only 32% (295/month) of the visits involved the stage-specific intervention for 12 minutes on average. The results with version 2 of the smoking prevention programme (where the general section was removed) showed that the number of visits to the stage-specific intervention doubled (650/month) and the average length of a visit increased from 12 to 17 minutes. However, the overall number of visits decreased by about 31%. The reintegration of the section with general information and the new structure of the home page of the smoking prevention programme (version 2.1) produced a marked increase in the number of visits (from 650 to 996 on average every month). In version 2.1, 72% of the visits (compared to 32% for version 1) involved the stage-specific section for 16 minutes on average.

Conclusions

Best results were gained when a section with general information was offered in addition to the stage-specific section, yet its link was put in a less prominent position.