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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Date Submitted: Feb 15, 2019
Date Accepted: May 16, 2019

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

An Experimental Investigation of Human Presence and Mobile Technologies on College Students’ Sun Protection Intentions: Between-Subjects Study

Niu Z, Jeong DC, Coups EJ, Stapleton JL

An Experimental Investigation of Human Presence and Mobile Technologies on College Students’ Sun Protection Intentions: Between-Subjects Study

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(8):e13720

DOI: 10.2196/13720

PMID: 31452523

PMCID: 6732976

Health Education on Mobile Devices: A Pilot Study of Human Presence and Mobile Technologies on College Students’ Sun Protection

  • Zhaomeng Niu; 
  • David Chongi Jeong; 
  • Elliot J. Coups; 
  • Jerod L. Stapleton

ABSTRACT

Background:

Health promotion and education programs are increasingly being adapted and developed for delivery via digital technologies. With this shift toward digital health approaches, it is important to identify design strategies in health education and promotion programs that enhance participant engagement and promote behavior change.

Objective:

The objective of the current study was to examine the impact of a pilot mHealth educational intervention regarding skin cancer and sun protection perceptions among American college students.

Methods:

A sample of 136 college students aged 18 years or above participated in the current study in a lab setting, which examined the individual and combinatory effects of multiple dimensions of digital technologies on a health outcome in a 2 (interactivity: high vs. low) x 2 (human presence: absence vs. presence) x 2 (screen size: big screen vs. small screen) between-subjects design. Outcomes included attitudes toward the information, various dimensions of trust (affective trust focusing on personal bonds or feelings and cognitive trust related to judgments of the reliability of information), and intentions to use sun protection.

Results:

Generally, the presence of human characters in the health educational message demonstrates effectiveness, producing more favorable attitudes (p < .001), greater intentions to use sun protection (p = .001), as well as higher affective trust (p = .003). Further, delivering educational health messages on a large screen (i.e., iPad) was associated with greater heuristic processing (p = .04) and higher affective trust (p < .001), whereas messages on a small screen (i.e., iPhone) was associated with greater systematic processing (p = .02) and higher cognitive trust (p = .006). Interestingly, while interactivity did not lead to more favorable attitudes towards the message, it did lead to greater intentions to use sun protection (p = .04).

Conclusions:

This experimental study indicates that features of digital health intervention design can influence its impact on recipients. Effects on attitudes, trust, and behavioral intentions were found for conditions with human presence, highlighting the importance of including this feature in mHealth programs. This pilot study demonstrates the acceptability and feasibility of an mHealth educational intervention manipulating human presence and mobile technologies and promoting college students’ sun protection.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Niu Z, Jeong DC, Coups EJ, Stapleton JL

An Experimental Investigation of Human Presence and Mobile Technologies on College Students’ Sun Protection Intentions: Between-Subjects Study

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2019;7(8):e13720

DOI: 10.2196/13720

PMID: 31452523

PMCID: 6732976

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.