IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i9p5626-d808951.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring User Engagement with a Socially Connected, Gamified Health Promotion Mobile App

Author

Listed:
  • Becky K. White

    (School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia)

  • Sharyn K. Burns

    (School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia
    Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia)

  • Roslyn C. Giglia

    (Foodbank WA, Perth 6105, Australia)

  • Satvinder S. Dhaliwal

    (Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia
    Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119077, Singapore
    Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), University of Science, Pukau Pinang 11800, Malaysia)

  • Jane A. Scott

    (School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia
    Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia)

Abstract

Participant engagement is an important consideration in mHealth interventions and there are no standardised measurements available to guide researchers. This paper describes the engagement index customised for the Milk Man app, a mobile app designed to engage fathers with breastfeeding and parenting information. Participants were recruited from maternity hospitals in Perth, Western Australia. An engagement index with scores ranging from 0 to 100 was calculated. Kaplan Meier survival analysis was used to determine difference in duration of exclusive breastfeeding, and Pearson’s chi square analysis was conducted to investigate the association of engagement level with demographic characteristics and exclusive breastfeeding at 6 weeks. While overall, partners of participants who installed Milk Man were less likely to have ceased exclusive breastfeeding at any time point from birth to six weeks postpartum, this result was modest and of borderline significance (log rank test p = 0.052; Breslow p = 0.046; Tarone-Ware p = 0.049). The mean engagement score was 29.7% (range 1–80%), median 27.6%. Engagement level had no impact on duration of exclusive breastfeeding and demographic factors were not associated with engagement level. This research demonstrates a range of metrics that can be used to quantify participant engagement. However, more research is needed to identify ways of measuring effective engagement.

Suggested Citation

  • Becky K. White & Sharyn K. Burns & Roslyn C. Giglia & Satvinder S. Dhaliwal & Jane A. Scott, 2022. "Measuring User Engagement with a Socially Connected, Gamified Health Promotion Mobile App," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-9, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:9:p:5626-:d:808951
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5626/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/9/5626/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:9:p:5626-:d:808951. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.