Online Anxiety Treament Programs: Assessment of Acceptability to Consumers

Abstract

Online treatment programs are shown to be effective in the treatment of anxiety and can address some of the reasons people do not seek treatment. Little is known, however, about their acceptability, which relates to the seeking out and persistence in a program, by possible consumers, and in particular the acceptability of certain components of the programs. To address this gap in the literature 234 students from the University of Canterbury rated the acceptability of Feedback in a described online program for a hypothetical individual suffering from anxiety. Using the same program and hypothetical individual, 72 students rated the acceptability of accessibility to feedback. Feedback Delay was the only significant variable found to influence acceptability. The program was rated as having medium acceptability and the study suggests that efforts should be made in online anxiety treatment programs to get feedback (of any kind) back to the user within 20minutes as this has the greatest influence on acceptability.