Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jun 20, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 26, 2024
Optimising measurement of information on the context of alcohol consumption within the Drink Less App amongst people drinking at increasing and higher risk levels: a mixed-methods usability study
ABSTRACT
Background:
There is a growing public health evidence base focused on understanding the links between drinking contexts and alcohol consumption. However, the potential value of developing context-based interventions to help people drinking at increasing and higher risk levels to cut down remains under-explored.
Objective:
This early-phase study aimed to identify the best method of collecting information on the contexts of alcohol consumption among users of an alcohol reduction app by comparing two alternative drinking diaries on user engagement, data quality, usability and acceptability.
Methods:
Participants were recruited using the online platform Prolific and randomly assigned to use one of two adapted versions of the Drink Less app for 14-days. Version 1 (Tags; n=31) included tags for location, motivation and company that participants added to drink records. Version 2 (Occasion type; n=31) included a list of occasion types that participants selected from when adding drink records. Engagement and data quality were assessed using app data, usability with a validated questionnaire, and acceptability with semi-structured interviews.
Results:
Quantitative findings on engagement, data quality and app usability were good overall, with participants using the app most days (Tags M:12.23 days SD:2.46; Occasion type M:12.39 days SD:2.12). Mean usability scores were similar across app versions (Tags M:72.39 SD:8.10; Occasion type M:74.23 SD:6.76). Qualitative analysis found that both versions were acceptable to users, relevant to their drinking occasions, and participants reported increased awareness of their drinking contexts. Several participants reported that the diary helped them to reduce alcohol consumption in some contexts (e.g. home or lone drinking) more than others (e.g. social drinking).
Conclusions:
There was no clearly better method for collecting data on the context of alcohol consumption as both methods had good user-engagement, usability, acceptability and data quality. The Occasion type method may be preferable for developing context-specific interventions due to lower participant burden.
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