? The overall goal of this project is to further develop and evaluate the Community Based Automated Smoking Assessment (CASA) system, an automated and interactive voice recognition (IVR) telephone system augmented by a web application database system to provide automated longitudinal assessment of smoking status variables for community based cessation programs, managed care organizations, smoking researchers or any other entity for which longitudinal assessment of smoking behavior would be beneficial. The system is configurable by the organization administering the smoking program, allowing the CASA client to select the assessment templates and schedule their administration as appropriate for the user's needs. ? ? The results of the Phase I project generally supported the feasibility of the CASA system as a useful and reliable smoking assessment method. The Phase I prototype approached r = .90 correlation between automated and live phone assessment contacts, complete data were obtained on 79 percent of subjects using this method despite a relatively indigent sample, and usability was rated positively. ? ? For Phase II we will receive feedback from 20 smoking researchers and 20 smoking cessation practitioners on additional smoking assessment templates, Based on this feedback and the result of Phase I, we will develop a fully functional prototype which allows for flexible set up of the phone assessment protocol for the researcher or practitioner and flexible response options for the end user. We will then conduct an """"""""analogue"""""""" cessation program, the purpose of which is to compare 250 smokers randomly assigned to live vs. automated assessment contacts over a 12 week period. Finally, we will recruit a minimum of five beta sites to use selected templates in their own research and program outcome studies. These sites will provide data on the usability of the system as well as alternate form reliability in actual conditions. ? ? ?
