Formal and content analyses of Motivational Interviewing to predict smoking behaviour in women post partum

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Wolfgang Hannöver (†)
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 192607060

Motivational Interviewing (MI) in facilitating behavior change has shown medium to large effect sizes in several meta-analyses. Reliable and valid methods to evaluate adherence to MI exist. A causal chain from MI-consistent counselling to clients verbal reactions to subsequent behaviour change has been empirically supported. The description and prediction of health behavior is addressed within the frameworks of social-cognitive models. For tobacco smoking the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) constitutes one of the most prominent models. The framework of Teachable Moments (TM) expands social-cognitive models and takes emotional reactions into account. Tobacco smoking in pregnancy and relapse prevention post partum pose as an area, where no interventions have shown sustainable long-term efficacy so far.In this study, 162 sessions of MI with post-partum women will be used to investigate whether a) formal aspects of MI, b) accounting for cognitively balancing pros and cons of behaviour change and strengthening self-efficacy as proposed in the TTM, and c) taking emotional processes into account as outlined in TM serve as predictors for behavior change following counselling. Qualitative and quantitative research methods will be integrated to utilize process information to predict of behavior change. We strive to contribute to the development of theoretical models to describe and predict health behaviour, and to deduct theory-driven interventions to facilitate behaviour change.Inspection of interrater agreement for a random sample of 20 % of transcripts yielded good to very good concordance rates for parsing as well as for coding using the Motivational Interviewing Sequential Code for Observing Process Exchanges (MI-SCOPE). For parsing the concordance rates range between kappa = .702 und k = .955 (Interquartilerange and median: .896 - .918 - .936). We observed no significant differences between raters (Kruskal-Wallis-Rank-ANOVA: chi2 = 2.648, df = 2, p = .266). For coding the concordance rates range between k = .727 und k = .886 (Interquartilerange und median: .782 - .809 - .837). We observed no significant differences between raters (Kruskal-Wallis-Rank-ANOVA: chi2 = 4.095, df = 2, p = .129). This indicates that the formal analyses produces a sufficiently sound basis for further analyses.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants