Discussion
depression, anxiety
IMI, SECONDARY, STS
This non-inferiority study showed that the guidance by a digital coach does not exceed a non-inferiority margin of − 0.3 in comparison to human-based guidance in an iCBT targeting academic procrastination. This result contradicts previous studies, which indicate that automated support in IMI is effective but inferior to human support [Regarding adherence, there was no significant difference between the two intervention groups, which is contradictory to the finding of a currently published meta-analysis. Musiat et al. (2022) find that on average, the completion rate in human-guided IMI targeting mental health is 12% higher than in unguided interventions [Finally, however, the relevance of the adherence of this target group must be questioned. So, our sensitivity analysis showed that the number of completed modules did not predict effectiveness in this trial, which is contradictory to previous studies on IMI[e.g., In both groups, self-reported procrastination in students was reduced with a medium effect size, measured with the IPS and STS across groups. The finding that IMI can reduce procrastination in college students is in line with previous studies which also reported medium within-group effect sizes for guided and unguided groups [In general, it is noticeable that the target group appears to be under significant psychological strain. This is shown, among other things, by the high anxiety and depression scores, which on average are above the generally applicable cut-off scores for the PHQ-8 and GAD-7 [Regarding exploratory analyses on further secondary outcomes, no clear pattern across the different outcome variables can be found at which point human guidance becomes superior. For example, there was IG inferiority for anxiety from measurement point t2. It is possible that it depends on the outcome measure whether human guidance is necessary. At the same time, it is important to observe the follow-up surveys to discover possible patterns. In general, students with procrastination could be a suitable target group for IMI with digital guidance [