JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital Mental Health Interventions could sustainably and scalably prevent and reduce loneliness in older adults. We designed an app containing a questionnaire-administering chatbot and 29 text-based games to stimulate inter-generational contact. We evaluate the app’s feasibility in reducing loneliness in older adults, addressing recruitment, data collection procedures, and gameplay activity.

Objective:

Our research aim was to describe the recruitment and inclusion process and search for options for improved efficiency in games for health studies.

Methods:

Recruitment, without strict exclusion and age criteria, was arranged via newsletters, articles, and a social media campaign. We used semi-structured interviews and descriptive analysis of questionnaire answers and game data.

Results:

The social media campaign reached 192.641 potential participants resulting in 1363 game downloads; 34 participants aged 65+ and 121 aged 65- provided consent (i.e., 99.92% dropout). Participants were primarily healthy, independently living, highly educated, working, married, female, and with children. We interviewed twelve Dutch-speaking participants (aged 65-79 years; 83% female). Dropout reasons entailed; too many chatbot questions and a mismatch between the inter-generational design focus and target group, as participants mainly played with peers.

Conclusions:

This study underlines the recruitment and retention difficulties regarding older adults in a social gaming loneliness intervention. It highlights the importance of a realistic assessment of recruitment strategies and targeted design for older adults in terms of language and user interface.