Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Dec 24, 2021)
Date Submitted: Mar 25, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 25, 2021 - May 20, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer-review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer-Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Developing a USSD-based mobile phone app to provide adolescents with sexual reproductive health information: A human-centered design approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
Adolescent pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections continue to impact 15 – 19-year-olds across the globe. The lack of sexual reproductive health information in resource-limited settings can often be due to cultural and societal attitudes to adolescent sexual reproductive health. Innovative approaches, including mobile phone technologies, are needed to address the need for adolescent reproductive health information.
Objective:
To design and develop a mobile app prototype to provide confidential adolescent reproductive health information on demand and evaluate its usability and user experience.
Methods:
A human-centered design methodology was applied. This practice framework allowed the perspectives and feedback of adolescent users to be included in the iterative design process. Field usability testing enabled the adolescents to provide feedback on the functionality, usability, and usefulness of the app.
Results:
During the usability test, 62 (54.9%) of the adolescents that were followed-up had used the app at least once, 30 (48.4%) of these were male participants and 32 (51.6%) female. The app was described as ‘very interesting’ to use by 44 (70.9%) participants, 20 male and 24 female. The content was deemed to be either ‘perfectly’ or ‘well targeted’ on sexual reproductive health by 60 (96.7%) adolescents, and the app was rated ‘best app’ by 45 (72.6%) adolescents, 27 female and 18 male, with a p-value = 0.011.
Conclusions:
A mobile phone app is a feasible and acceptable way to deliver adolescent sexual reproductive health information in resource-limited settings. The USSD mobile phone technology could deliver confidential information on demand.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© 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.