JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Shift-work nurses experience substantial variability in work schedules, health behaviors, and recovery patterns. Traditional retrospective surveys often fail to capture these fluctuations due to recall bias. Although diary-based approaches offer methodological advantages, paper-based diaries impose high participant burden and pose challenges for data management.

Objective:

This study aimed to develop and evaluate the Nurses’ Work-life and Health application, a user-centered mobile health tool designed to capture real-time, longitudinal data on nurses’ work-life experiences and health practices.

Methods:

A three-phase, user-centered iterative design was employed: (1) needs assessment; (2) application development with alpha testing (n=5) and beta testing (n=16); (3) a 14-day feasibility and process evaluation. The feasibility study involved five shift-work nurses as end-users. To complement end-user evaluation, an expert nurse researcher participated in a follow-up semi-structured interview assessing the methodological rigor of the data collection process. Evaluation was guided by the Technology Acceptance Model and the System Usability Scale. Objective system logs and subjective surveys were integrated to analyze adherence, completion, and user burden. Interview data were analyzed by qualitative descriptive coding.

Results:

The application demonstrated high usability and acceptance, with total mean scores of 3.47 in alpha testing and 3.48 in beta testing (range 1–4). In the feasibility study, the application demonstrated 100% retention and 90% adherence (mean 13.2 ± 1.1 days). The data entry completion rate was 88.5%, with an average entry time of 3.4 min. Participants reported high overall satisfaction and low user burden, reflected by mean scores of 3.82 and 3.65, respectively. Time-stamped logs confirmed the feasibility of near-real-time data capture without disrupting clinical workflows. Qualitative feedback from the expert nurse researcher highlighted the application’s methodological strengths, including its potential to reduce recall bias and support for self-monitoring, while also identifying areas for refinement.

Conclusions:

By integrating end-user feasibility findings with qualitative input from an expert nurse researcher, the Nurses’ Work-life and Health application demonstrated feasibility, usability, and methodological value for repeated mobile data collection. The findings support its potential use in longitudinal nursing research and identify areas for refinement.