Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 21, 2021
Date Accepted: Dec 6, 2021
(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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Digital Assessment Tools Using Animation Features to Quantify Alcohol Consumption: A Systematic Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Accurate and user-friendly assessment tools to quantify alcohol consumption are a prerequisite for effective interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm. Digital assessment tools that allow the description of consumed alcoholic drinks through animation features may facilitate more accurate reporting than conventional approaches.
Objective:
This review aimed to (1) identify and characterize freely available digital assessment tools in English or Russian language that use animation features to support the quantitative assessment of alcohol consumption (alcohol DATs) and (2) to determine to what extent such tools have been scientifically evaluated in terms of feasibility, acceptability, and validity.
Methods:
(1) Systematic English and Russian searches were conducted in iOS and Android app stores and via the Google search engine. Information on background, content and animation features of eligible DATs were obtained from app store descriptions and websites and through test completions. (2) A systematic literature review was carried out in Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science to identify studies reporting on feasibility, acceptability, and validity of animation-using alcohol DATs. Due to the high heterogeneity of study designs, results were synthetized narratively.
Results:
We identified 22 eligible alcohol DATs in English, three of which were also available in Russian. All but one tool allowed to choose a beverage type from a visually displayed selection. Eight tools additionally enabled the choice of a drinking vessel. Two tools allowed to ‘virtually pour a drink’. For none of the tools published evaluation studies were identified in the literature review. The systematic literature review identified five exploratory studies evaluating feasibility, acceptability, and validity of four animation-using alcohol DATs, one of which was available in app stores. The evaluated tools reached moderate to high scores on user rating scales and showed fair to high convergent validity when compared to established assessment methods.
Conclusions:
Animation-using alcohol DATs are available in app stores and online. Yet, they often use non-dynamic features and lack scientific background information. Study data suggests that such tools might enable the user-friendly and valid assessment of alcohol consumption and could thus serve as one building block in the reduction of the alcohol-attributable health burden worldwide. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO (CRD42020172825)
Citation
