Developing Targeted Text Messages for Enhancing Medication Adherence

Adherence to prescription medication regimens is one of the main problems that patients and doctors face when trying to manage chronic disease. This research-in-progress paper reports on the development of text messages to be used in a largescale mobile technology intervention to influence medication adherence. The messages will be developed based upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). ELM is a theory about individual processes responsible for making communication more or less persuasive. The model holds that there are two relatively distinct routes to persuasion: core processing and peripheral processing. The wording of the messages being developed in this study will be manipulated to focus on logical message content (for core processing) or emotional cues (for peripheral processing). A rigorous, multi-phase message development plan is currently underway and presented in this research-in-progress paper. The results of the research will be presented at the AMCIS 2013 conference.