Abstract
BackgroundUsing mobile phone apps to promote behavior change is becoming increasingly common. However, there is no clear way to rate apps against their behavior change potential.ObjectiveThis study aimed to develop a reliable, theory-based scale that can be used to assess the behavior change potential of smartphone apps.MethodsA systematic review of all studies purporting to investigate app’s behavior change potential was conducted. All scales and measures from the identified studies were collected to create an item pool. From this item pool, 3 health promotion exerts created the App Behavior Change Scale (ABACUS). To test the scale, 70 physical activity apps were rated to provide information on reliability.ResultsThe systematic review returned 593 papers, the abstracts and titles of all were reviewed, with the full text of 77 papers reviewed; 50 papers met the inclusion criteria. From these 50 papers, 1333 questions were identified. Removing duplicates and unnecessary questions left 130 individual questions, which were then refined into the 21-item scale. The ABACUS demonstrates high percentage agreement among reviewers (over 80%), with 3 questions scoring a Krippendorff alpha that would indicate agreement and a further 7 came close with alphas >.5. The scale overall reported high interrater reliability (2-way mixed interclass coefficient=.92, 95% CI 0.81-0.97) and high internal consistency (Cronbach alpha=.93).ConclusionsThe ABACUS is a reliable tool that can be used to determine the behavior change potential of apps. This instrument fills a gap by allowing the evaluation of a large number of apps to be standardized across a range of health categories.
Highlights
The delivery of psychological and public health interventions through technology is becoming an increasingly common way to prevent illness and promote health
Research investigating mobile phone–based technology over recent years has shown that short message service (SMS) text message–based interventions can have a positive impact on sexual health knowledge [15] and that most health http://mhealth.jmir.org/2019/1/e11130/
This study reports on the creation of a scale (ABACUS) to measure the potential behavior change of smartphone apps
Summary
The delivery of psychological and public health interventions through technology is becoming an increasingly common way to prevent illness and promote health. In 2017, there were 325,000 health apps across the 2 most common app platforms: Google Play and iTunes [5] This includes apps that have been developed to assist patients in the management of a range of diseases and conditions, including diabetes mellitus type 1 or 2 [1,6], pain management [7,8], the promotion of increased physical activity [9,10], improve nutrition [11,12], and the promotion of improved mental health [13,14]. Using mobile phone apps to promote behavior change is becoming increasingly common. There is no clear way to rate apps against their behavior change potential
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