JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The need to attend a medically supervised hospital- or clinic-based appointment is a well-recognized barrier to exercise participation. The development of reliable and accurate home-based functional tests has the potential to decrease burden on the health care system while enabling support, information, and assessment.

Objective:

(1) Explore the usability (i.e., acceptability, satisfaction, accuracy, and practicality) of the EasyMeasure App to self-administer the 6MWT within young healthy adults, (2) to determine parallel forms reliability and construct validity of conducting a self-administered 6MWT using technology.

Methods:

A usability study design was used. English speaking, undergraduate university students, who had access to an iPhone or iPad device running iOS 10 or later, and self-reported being able to walk for six minutes were recruited for this study. Consenting participants were randomized to either a standard 6MWT group (i.e., supervised without use of the App) or a technology 6MWT group (i.e., unsupervised with the App to mimic independent implementation of the test). All participants also performed a maximal treadmill test. Participants in the technology 6MWT group completed the UTAUT questionnaire and a satisfaction questionnaire after completing the assessment. Parallel forms reliability of the 6MWT using technology was analyzed by comparing participant self-administered scores and assessor scores using Pearson correlation coefficients across and between trials. Construct validity was assessed by comparing participant 6MWT scores (both standard and using technology) to maximum treadmill test variables (VO2peak, VT).

Results:

Twenty university students consented to take part in this study. All but two participants (80%) in the technology 6MWT group had deviations which prevented them from accurately conducting the 6MWT using the App and none of the participants were able to successfully score the 6MWT. However, a significant strong correlation was found (r=.834 (P=.003)) when comparing participants’ scores for the 6MWT using technology to the assessors scores. No significant correlations were found between maximal treadmill test VO2peak scores and 6MWT prediction equations using standard 6MWT scores (equation 1: r=.119, P =.779); equation 2: r= .095, P=.823); equation 3: r= .119, P=.779)), however, standard 6MWT scores were significantly correlated with VT values (r= .810, P=.015). Calculated sub-maximal treadmill scores and assessor 6MWT scores using technology also demonstrated a significant correlation (r=.661, P=.038).

Conclusions:

This study demonstrated significant usability concerns in regard to the accuracy of a self-administered 6MWT using the EasyMeasure App. However, the strong and significant correlation between the 6MWT and VT values demonstrate the potential of the 6MWT to measure functional capacity for the purposes of community-based exercise screening and patient monitoring.