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Telehealth and virtual health agents are rising as possible supplements or alternatives to in-person health services. They may be efficacious in both mental and medical health settings.
These alternatives are a viable solution to growing health disparities for underserved individuals who are limited in availability of time, accessibility of healthcare treatment, and transportation, and for those living in rural areas.¹
As such, this project provides insight to the acceptability of a virtual health agent aimed to support alcohol users.

INTRODUCTION:

METHODS:

RESULTS:

REFERENCES

Blandford, A., Gibbs, J., Newhouse, N., Perski, O., Singh, A., & Murray, E. (2018). Seven lessons for interdisciplinary research on interactive digital health interventions. Digital health, 4, 2055207618770325.

We first used open coding to identify emergent themes, which were then organized into a codebook that was used to code all transcripts.
The agent acceptability codes were weighed on a scale from 1-5 (1 = negative experience, 3 = neutral experience, 5 = positive experience).
Inconsistencies were resolved through consensus coding.

Participants provided positive feedback around virtual health agent’s non-verbal gestures, appearance, voice speed, and verbal tone.

Diane G. Marin, MA; Jaynish Hazari, MPH, MA; James Hodgins, MA; Ubbo Visser, PhD; Christine Lisetti, PhD

Maya Boustani, PhD;

DISCUSSION:

These findings provide valuable information for developers of virtual mental health software applications delivered by virtual agents regarding the importance of virtual agent’s appearance, gestures, and voice.
In this study, consumers perceived the agent’s appearance and body language as appropriate. However, consumers felt that the health agent’s voice tone and speed needed to be improved.
Recommendations from participants include creating a voice speed controller or making the voice speed faster.

Alcohol Users Feedback on Using a Virtual Agent to receive a Motivational Interviewing Intervention

“I liked her little gestures, she was like really attentive.”

(Code Agent Acceptability – Gestures/Non-Verbal)

“I liked the physical appearance; the voice was okay. It was a little robotic. Oh and… the speech could be a little faster. It was a little slow for me.”

(Code Agent Acceptability – Appearance, Voice Speed)

ACKOWLEDGEMENT:

The original project was partially funded by grant No. 1423260 from the National Science Foundation.

Agent Quality:	Weighted Code Averages (Mean)
Non-Verbal Gestures	M=3.3
Appearance	M=3.3
Voice Speed	M=1.8
Verbal Tone	M=2.5

Participant Demographics (N = 18)
50% Female
40% White, 20% Black, 10% Latin, 5% Asian

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