Preparing for Quitting Smoking and Becoming More Physically Active with a Virtual Coach: Reflections for Persuasive Messages and Action Plans

This dataset contains action plans for doing preparatory activities (n = 469) and free-text responses to reflective questions about preparatory activities (n = 2026) in the context of quitting smoking and becoming more physically active with a virtual coach. 289 reflections concern the views of experts, 750 the views of similar people, and 987 commitment to one's decision to quit smoking. The dataset also contains data on user characteristics (e.g., age, personality). <strong>Study</strong> The data was gathered during a longitudinal study on the online crowdsourcing platform Prolific between 20 May 2021 and 30 June 2021. The Human Research Ethics Committee of Delft University of Technology granted ethical approval for the research (Letter of Approval number: 1523). In this study, 671 smokers who were contemplating or preparing to quit smoking interacted with the text-based virtual coach Sam in up to five conversational sessions. In each session, participants were assigned a new preparatory activity for quitting smoking, such as thinking of and writing down reasons for quitting smoking. Since becoming more physically active can make it easier to quit smoking, half of the activities addressed preparing for becoming more physically active. Sam persuaded people to do their assigned activity using one of five persuasion types (commitment, consensus, authority, action planning, and no persuasion). For the persuasion types of commitment, consensus, and authority, Sam first uttered a persuasive message, followed by a reflective question that participants were asked to provide a free-text response to (e.g. "Please tell me what you think: In what way does doing this activity match your decision to successfully quit smoking?"). For the persuasion type of action planning, participants were asked to type an action plan for doing the activity into the chat. After the five sessions, participants filled in a post-questionnaire in which they were asked about their ease of and motivation to do their preparatory activities via two items each. The study was pre-registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/k2uac. This pre-registration describes the study design, measures, etc. Note that this dataset contains only part of the collected data, namely, the data related to studying the reflections and action plans created by participants. Other data from this study has been published in separate datasets: Acceptance of the virtual coach: https://doi.org/10.4121/19934783.v1. Users' needs for a digital smoking cessation application: https://doi.org/10.4121/20284131.v2. Effectiveness of a reinforcement learning-algorithm for persuading to prepare for quitting smoking and becoming more physically active: https://doi.org/10.4121/21533055.v2. Since the same random participant identifiers are used in these datasets, data from the separate datases can be linked. Pointers to more information on the study: The implementation of the virtual coach Sam can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6319356. A list of the formulations of the 24 activities used in the study can be found in S8 Appendix of our paper: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295. All reflective questions can be found in Table 3 in the same paper: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295. The structure of the conversations with the virtual coach is visualized in S4 Appendix of the same paper: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295. <strong>Data</strong> This dataset contains five types of data (explained in the file "_Explanation_of_Data_Files.xlsx"): <strong>Data from participants' Prolific profiles</strong>. This includes data on demographics (e.g., age range, household size, household income) as well as smoking and physical activity behavior (e.g., weekly exercise amount, smoking frequency). <strong>Data from a pre-screening questionnaire</strong>. This includes, for example, the responses to informed consent questions. <strong>Data from a pre-questionnaire</strong>. This includes data on smoking and physical activity behavior, as well as personality and need for cognition. <strong>Data from the conversational sessions</strong>. This includes the action plans and reflective question answers, the effort people spent on their activity from the previous session, people's mood (e.g., "happy", "miserable", "gloomy"), answers to state questions (e.g., having sufficient time to do the assigned activity), and the persuasion type used by the virtual coach. <strong>Data from a post-questionnaire</strong>. This includes data on the ease of and motivation to do the preparatory activities. There is a separate data file for each type of data. For each data file, there is also a corresponding .xlsx-file explaining each measure in detail. In case of questions about this dataset, please contact Nele Albers ([e-mail]).

本数据集包含两类核心内容：一是针对戒烟并借助虚拟教练（virtual coach）提升身体活动量的准备活动所制定的行动计划（共469份），二是针对上述准备活动的反思性问题自由文本回复（共2026份）。其中，289条反思内容来自专家视角，750条来自同类戒烟群体视角，另有987条为参与者对自身戒烟决心的阐述。数据集还收录了用户特征数据，如年龄、人格特质等。

**研究**
本数据集的数据采集于2021年5月20日至2021年6月30日期间，在众包平台Prolific上开展的一项纵向研究。代尔夫特理工大学人类研究伦理委员会已为该研究批准伦理许可（批准函编号：1523）。本研究共招募671名正在考虑或准备戒烟的吸烟者，要求其与文本型虚拟教练Sam进行最多5轮对话会话。每轮会话中，参与者会被分配一项新的戒烟准备活动，例如思考并写下戒烟理由。由于提升身体活动量可辅助戒烟，半数活动同时围绕提升身体活动量的准备工作展开。虚拟教练Sam会通过五种说服策略之一劝说参与者完成分配的活动，分别为：承诺式说服、共识式说服、权威式说服、行动计划式说服以及无说服。针对承诺式、共识式与权威式说服，Sam会先发送说服性话术，随后提出反思性问题，要求参与者以自由文本形式回复（例如："请分享你的想法：完成这项活动如何助力你成功戒烟？"）。而针对行动计划式说服，参与者需要在聊天框中输入该活动的行动计划。完成5轮会话后，参与者需填写后测问卷，通过两道题目分别评估其完成准备活动的难易程度与动机水平。本研究已在开放科学框架（Open Science Framework, OSF）上预注册，链接为：https://osf.io/k2uac。预注册文档中详细说明了研究设计、测量工具等内容。

请注意，本数据集仅包含部分采集到的数据，即与参与者生成的反思内容和行动计划相关的数据。该研究的其他数据已发布在独立数据集当中：
1. 虚拟教练接受度：https://doi.org/10.4121/19934783.v1
2. 数字化戒烟应用的用户需求：https://doi.org/10.4121/20284131.v2
3. 用于劝说参与者准备戒烟与提升身体活动量的强化学习算法有效性：https://doi.org/10.4121/21533055.v2
由于上述数据集使用了相同的随机参与者标识符，各独立数据集的数据可进行关联。

关于本研究的更多信息指引如下：
- 虚拟教练Sam的实现方案可参考：https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6319356
- 本研究使用的24项活动的具体表述可参见论文的S8附录：https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295
- 所有反思性问题可参见该论文的表3：https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295
- 与虚拟教练的对话流程可参见该论文的S4附录：https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277295

**数据**
本数据集包含五类数据，具体说明详见文件"_Explanation_of_Data_Files.xlsx"：
1. **参与者Prolific档案数据**：涵盖人口统计学信息（如年龄区间、家庭规模、家庭收入），以及吸烟与身体活动行为数据（如每周锻炼时长、吸烟频率）。
2. **预筛选问卷数据**：例如知情同意题目的作答结果。
3. **前测问卷数据**：涵盖吸烟与身体活动行为、人格特质以及认知需求量表数据。
4. **对话会话数据**：包括行动计划与反思性问题回复、参与者对上一轮活动投入的努力程度、情绪状态（如"开心""痛苦""低落"）、状态类问题作答结果（例如是否有充足时间完成分配的活动），以及虚拟教练使用的说服策略类型。
5. **后测问卷数据**：包括参与者完成准备活动的难易程度与动机水平数据。

每一类数据对应一个独立的数据文件，且每个数据文件均配有对应的.xlsx文件，用于详细解释各项测量指标。若您对本数据集有任何疑问，请联系Nele Albers（邮箱：[e-mail]）。