Reasons to Be Satisfied or Dissatisfied With a Virtual Coach for Quitting Smoking and Becoming More Physically Active

Abstract

A virtual coach, Sam, was created by the Perfect Fit project to aid users in establishing a foundation to stop smoking via the means of making them more physically active. Data from 500 users had been collected from them during stages which start with a pre-screening phase until a post-questionnaire phase. In the latter stage, they provided a rating regarding their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with Sam and a free-text response mentioning the reasons why.

Through different means of analysing the data, the research question is answered, which is determining the reasons to be satisfied or dissatisfied with a virtual coach for quitting smoking and becoming more physically active. The three methods of analysis that have been used are a qualitative thematic analysis of the free-text responses, a quantitative analysis of user characteristics and ratings to obtain Pearson correlations, and a literature study.

The findings display five themes which altered users' satisfaction when using Sam. These themes are technical competency, beneficiality, user experience, interrelations and conversationalist. The quantitative analysis had resulted in correlations of at most a moderate degree. However, from the ones which displayed a significant p-value, only 3 correlations against ratings were found and 3 correlations against themes were found. A literature study conducted on outcomes of research from relevant eHealth applications aided the direction of some correlations, such as ones with personality traits. Moreover, their correlation outcomes were compared to shed light on whether the outcomes of this research and previous ones align or differ. Some correlations did align such as with the case of the beneficiality theme against a user's characteristic of conscientiousness and emotional stability.