To promote smoking cessation, it is essential to promote intentions to quit smoking, as intentions are important precursors to action. The goal of this B/START award is to use ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to study fluctuations in quit motivation and perceived momentary self-regulation abilities for smokers who are not ready to attempt quitting. Burgeoning research suggests that intentions to quit may shift rapidly and subsume several different aspects of quit motivation (e.g., desire to be a non-smoker, willingness to engage in effort toward cessation). Thus far, EMA has been underutilized in studying fluctuations in motivation over time in smokers? own environments, particularly in smokers who are interested in reducing smoking but not yet ready to quit. Prior research has also established the importance of people?s perceptions of their own self-regulation abilities in predicting cessation success, such as the perceived ability to control craving, tolerate distress, or exert willpower. Yet these perceived abilities also likely vary across situations, and may vary systematically alongside quit motivation. Thus, a critical barrier to understanding quit intentions is a lack of knowledge about how underlying motivational tendencies and perceived self-regulation abilities fluctuate over time and situational context. The objective of this B/START R03 grant is to use EMA to examine fluctuations in quit motivation and perceived self-regulation abilities for smokers interested in quitting but not yet ready to quit. To accomplish this, we will (Aim 1) use EMA to assess momentary quit motivation over time, across (Aim 1a) both smoking and non-smoking contexts and (Aim 1b) evaluate how these fluctuations in motivation are associated with momentary perceived self-regulation abilities, specifically the ability to control cravings, tolerate distress and exert willpower. We will then (Aim 2) determine if fluctuations in motivation and momentary perceived self- regulation abilities predict variability in nightly quit intentions. Our central hypothesis is that contextual variability in quit motivation and momentary perceived self-regulation abilities will predict quit intentions. The proposed research is significant because evidence that quit motivation and intention varies across contexts would have the potential to advance the field in several ways, namely by providing avenues toward new behavioral intervention targets. The proposed research is innovative because it uses well-established methods for understanding dynamic processes (e.g., EMA), but is the first to apply these methods to understanding fluctuations in quit motivation and intention, in an understudied group of smokers?those who are interested in reducing smoking but not yet ready to attempt cessation. This grant will form the foundation of a series of future directions, including using the measures developed here to predict lapse following a cessation attempt, and development of ecological momentary interventions that can activate motivation to quit and encourage quit intentions by helping people manage self-regulation conflicts as they occur in daily life.
In the current study we will evaluate dynamic motivational processes underlying smoking quit intentions. This study has the potential to advance the NIH?s mission to improve public health by i) developing a better understanding of how motivational processes vary across contexts, ii) providing novel information about beliefs that smokers have about their own self-regulation abilities, and iii) opening the door to new treatments that can increase quit attempts in smokers.
