Understanding Attrition in Text-Based Health Promotion for Fathers: Survival Analysis

BACKGROUND: Web-based interventions targeting parents with health and parenting support frequently report high rates of attrition. The SMS4dads text messaging program, developed in Australia, has delivered texts to over 10,000 fathers. The brief text messages, which are sent 3 times per week from 16 weeks of gestation to 48 weeks after birth, include regular reminders that participants can leave the program by texting back “STOP” to any message. Although acceptance of the program is high, almost 1 in 5 ask it to be removed. Analyzing the factors influencing attrition from digital parenting programs such as SMS4dads may assist in developing more effective interventions. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine factors associated with attrition in a text-based intervention targeting fathers. METHODS: Demographic characteristics, requests to complete a psychological scale, individual message content, participant feedback, and automatically collected data registering clicks on links embedded in the texts were examined to identify attrition factors among 3261 participants enrolled in SMS4dads from 4 local health districts in New South Wales, Australia, between September 2020 and December 2021. RESULTS: Participants who were smokers, recorded risky alcohol consumption, had a lower education level, or signed up prenatally had 30% to 47% higher hazard of dropout from the program, whereas participant age, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status, rurality, and psychological distress score (as Kessler Psychological Distress Scale [K10] category) were not associated with dropout. Primary reasons for dropping out reported by 202 of 605 respondents included “other reasons” (83/202, 41.1%), followed by “not helpful” (47/202, 23.3%) and “too busy” (44/202, 21.8%). Program features such as repeated requests to complete a psychological scale (K10) and the content of individual messages were not linked to increased dropout rates. Analysis of a sample (216/2612) of inactive participants who had not engaged (clicked on any embedded links) for at least 10 weeks but who had not opted out identified a further 1.5% of participants who would opt to leave the program if asked. CONCLUSIONS: Identifying which features of the participant population and of the program are linked to dropout rates can provide guidance for improving program adherence. However, with limited information from feedback surveys of those exiting early, knowing which features to target does not, by itself, suggest ways to increase engagement. Planning ahead to include robust measures of attrition, including more detailed feedback from participants, could provide more effective guidance. A novel element in this study was seeking feedback from inactive participants to estimate dropout from this group and thereby provide an overall dropout rate of 20%. The retention rate of 80%, relatively high compared with other web-based parenting programs for fathers, suggests that tailoring the content to specifically address fathers’ role may be an important consideration in reducing fathers’ disengagement.