JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Turkish translation of the Dutch Talking Touch Screen Questionnaire (TTSQ) has been developed to help physical therapy patients with a Turkish background in The Netherlands to autonomously elucidate their health problems and impairments and set treatment goals regardless of their level of health literacy.

Objective:

The aim of the current study was to evaluate the usability (defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) of the Turkish TTSQ for physical therapy patients with a Turkish background with diverse levels of health literacy and experience in using mobile technology.

Methods:

The qualitative Three-Step Test-Interview method, including both think-aloud and retrospective probing techniques, was carried out to get insight into the usability of the Turkish TTSQ. Ten physical therapy patients were included. The interview data were analyzed using a thematic content analysis approach aimed at analyzing the accuracy and completeness with which participants completed the questionnaire (effectiveness), the time it took the participants to complete the questionnaire (efficiency) and the extent to which the participants were satisfied with the ease of use of the questionnaire (satisfaction). The problems encountered by the participants in this study were given a severity rating which was used to provide a rough estimate of the need for additional usability efforts.

Results:

No participant in this study was able to complete the questionnaire without encountering any usability problem. A total of 17 different kinds of problems were found. Three problems should be addressed during future development of the tool based on their severity score: ‘Not using the navigation function of the photo-gallery in question 4 causing the participant not seeing all presented response items’, ‘Touching the text underneath a photo in question 4 to select an activity instead of touching the photo itself causing the activity not to be selected’ and ‘Pushing too hard or tapping too soft on the touch-screen causing the touch screen not to respond’. The data on efficiency within this study were not valid and therefore not reported within this article. No participant was distinctly satisfied or dissatisfied about the overall ease of use of the Turkish TTSQ. Two participants who had no prior experience with using tablet computers felt that, regardless of what kind of improvements would be made, it would just be too difficult for them to learn to work with the device.

Conclusions:

Just like the Dutch TTSQ the Turkish TTSQ needs to be improved before it can be released. The results of the current study confirm the conclusion of the Dutch TTSQ study that participants with lower education and less experience in using mobile technology are less able to operate the TTSQ effectively. The bilingual setting has had a negative effect on data collection within the current study.