Grant Details
Grant Number: |
3R01CA240452-03S1 Interpret this number |
Primary Investigator: |
Berkman, Elliot |
Organization: |
University Of Oregon |
Project Title: |
Construal Level as a Novel Pathway for Affect Regulation and Cancer Control |
Fiscal Year: |
2022 |
Abstract
Project Summary/Abstract
A pervasive problem faced by the science of behavior change is that not all people respond to the same
degree - if at all - to a given intervention program. Even the “best” treatments in terms of main effects fail to
produce change in some people, and even the “worst” treatments by the same measure can be highly effective
for some individuals. A principled, powerful tool that could rigorously identify and test candidate moderators of
intervention effects, answering the question, “what works for whom?”, would greatly advance the science of
behavior change. Attempts to address that question have led the scientific community to focus on moderators
of intervention response. A more precise science of behavior change moves beyond “main effects”
comparisons, which describe the efficacy of intervention programs in terms of only the average level of
behavior change within a group, to more sensitive analyses that model an intervention’s expected behavior
change for individual people depending on their scores on moderating factors. This supplement presents a
conceptual framework and a proof-of-concept study for using large-scale data to identify and test potential
moderators of behavior change programs. Specifically, the proposed work will establish moderators - one
based in theory and others identified in a principled, data-driven way - of an ongoing intervention to reduce
cigarette smoking. The proposed work is responsive to NOT-OD-22-140 (“Administrative Supplement for
Research Efforts that Illuminate Fundamental Processes Underlying Behavior Change, Maintenance, and
Adherence”) because it will “examine causal, process, or contextual variables that…are hypothesized to be
associated with or contributing to (mediators or moderators) of an intervention study’s main effect (efficacy)
over the course of behavior initiation and maintenance.” The parent R01 hypothesizes that high-level
construal (i.e., thinking about the act of smoking cessation in abstract terms such as “promoting a healthy
life”) will increase participants’ desire to quit and reduce their craving for cigarettes. However, high-level
construal draws upon complex mental processing and verbal fluency, so its efficacy might well depend on
a person’s cognitive ability. We will test this notion in a new, high-powered, online sample of smokers who
will view a subset of the intervention materials and complete an innovative measure of cognitive ability
(Aim 1). Additionally, because theories can be incorrect or incomplete, the same sample of people
recruited for Aim 1 will complete the broad-bandwidth Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA) of
individual differences to provide a more thorough search space for candidate moderators (Aim 2). This
approach complements the theory-driven strategy adopted in Aim 1 and provides a proof-of-concept
demonstration of a new tool to systematically identify and test candidate moderators of intervention effects.
The public health impact of knowledge about moderators would be to optimally and prospectively assign
people to a treatment that is likely to be efficacious in helping them change behaviors relevant to health.
Publications
None. See parent grant details.