Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Dec 21, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 21, 2021 - Feb 15, 2022
Date Accepted: Apr 11, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Testing of A Mobile App for Participatory Research to Identify Teen-targeted Food Marketing: A Mixed-methods Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Mobile apps are not only an effective method for promoting health to teenagers, they are also a useful tool for engaging them in participatory research around factors that influence their health. Given the impact of food marketing messages on teenagers’ food attitudes and consumption choices, it is important to develop effective methods for capturing the food advertisements targeted at this population in order to assess their content.
Objective:
This study tests the feasibility and usability of an mHealth mobile app, “GrabFM!” (“Grab Food Marketing!”), designed for teenagers to facilitate monitoring of self-identified targeted food marketing messaging.
Methods:
Mixed methods, including quantitative user response rates, and qualitative focus group discussion feedback were used in the evaluation process.
Results:
Sixty-two teenagers (ages 13-17) completed the GrabFM! app pilot testing over a 7-day data collection period. Teenagers submitted a total of 339 examples of food marketing, suggesting high feasibility for the app. Participants also took part in focus group discussions about their experience, providing positive feedback on usability, including ease of use and design/aesthetic appeal.
Conclusions:
The GrabFM! app had high feasibility and usability, suggesting its efficacy in capturing accurate data relevant to the teenage population’s experience with food marketing messaging. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.
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.