A Prospective Study Protocol for a Digital Peer Support Platform: A Randomized Controlled Trial to Translate Online Peer Support for Emerging Adult Mental Well-being (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Background: The burgeoning mental health issues among emerging adults (ages 19 to 25) worldwide has fueled concerns about their widespread experiences of anxiety and depression. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging studies are being directed towards the development and deployment of digital peer emotional disclosure and support for the psychological well-being of emerging adults. However, much remains to be explored regarding implementation and clinical effectiveness, how best to conduct digital peer support intervention for emerging adults’ psychological well-being, and the associated mechanism of change. OBJECTIVE Objective: This protocol delineates a randomized controlled trial for evaluating the implementation and clinical effectiveness of Acceset, a digital peer support intervention for emerging adult mental well-being with two components. First, the digital peer support training equips befrienders (i.e., peers who provide support) in harnessing four active ingredients—Mattering, selfhood, compassion, and mindfulness—to provide effective peer support for seekers (peers who seek support). Second, the Acceset platform incorporates digital markers of psychological well-being, hinges on peer emotional disclosure process and entails community engagement. METHODS Methods: 100 participants (aged 19 to 25) from the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be recruited and randomly allocated into two arms. Arm 1 (n = 50) seekers will engage with the Acceset platform for a period of 3 weeks, together with befrienders (n = 30) and moderators (n = 30). Arm 2 (n = 50) a control group will be placed on a waitlist for Acceset intervention. Both seekers and befrienders will be monitored using a questionnaire battery at 4 time points: baseline (before the intervention), 3 weeks (the end of the intervention), 6 weeks and 9 weeks (to measure carry over effects). The implementation outcomes on the two components of the intervention will be adoption and fidelity evaluation of the digital peer support training curriculum and the feasibility and acceptability of the Acceset platform. The clinical outcomes will include Mattering, self-hood, compassion, mindfulness, perceived social support and psychological well-being scores. RESULTS Results: This protocol has received approval by the Institutional Ethics Review Board of NUS in October 2021. Recruitment will commence in January 2022. We expect data collection and analyses to be completed in June 2022. The aim is to publish the preliminary results in December 2022. The size effect will be estimated using the Cohen d index with a significance level of .05 (95% reliability) and a conventional 80% power statistic. CONCLUSIONS Conclusions: This protocol considers a novel digital peer support intervention—Acceset—that incorporates active ingredients and digital markers of emerging adult mental well-being. Through the validation of Acceset intervention, this study defines the parameters and conditions for digital peer support intervention for emerging adults. CLINICALTRIAL Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05083676