Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jan 3, 2020
Date Accepted: Jul 21, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Mobile fitness and weight management apps: an evaluation protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Obesity is a large contributing factor for many non-communicable diseases and is a growing problem worldwide. Many mobile apps have been developed to help users improve their fitness and weight management behaviours. However, the speed at which apps are created and updated means that it is important to periodically assess their quality.
Objective:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of fitness and weight management mobile health apps using the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS). It will also describe the features of the included apps and compare the results to a previous evaluation conducted in 2015.
Methods:
Searches for “fitness”, “weight”, “exercise”, “physical activity”, “diet”, “eat*”, and “food” will be conducted in the Apple App Store and Google Play. Apps that have been updated over the past five years will be included. Two reviewers will rate the apps’ quality using the MARS objective and subjective quality subscales. Inter-rater reliability will also be assessed. Features included in high quality apps will be assessed, and changes in quality, features, and Behaviour Change Techniques [1] in the past 5 years will be described.
Results:
Results will be included in the evaluation paper, which we aim to publish in 2020.
Conclusions:
This evaluation will assess the quality of currently available fitness and weight management apps.
Citation
