Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Aug 5, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 4, 2024 - Aug 26, 2024
Date Accepted: Nov 10, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Translation and Validation of the User Version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale into Polish language
ABSTRACT
Background:
As mobile health (mHealth) applications continue to revolutionize healthcare by providing innovative ways to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease, there is an urgent need for standardized tools to assess their effectiveness and quality. The User Version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (uMARS) is considered to be crucial in assessing mHealth applications, ensuring that they meet user expectations and healthcare standards in different cultural contexts.
Objective:
Mobile health (mHealth) applications can innovatively diagnose, prevent, and treat several diseases. The increasing importance of using mHealth applications necessitates an appropriate assessment standard. This study translated the user version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (uMARS) into Polish, followed by validation, cultural adaptation, and examination of its reliability and validity.
Methods:
The Polish version of uMARS was adapted, translated, and validated based on the free "STOP COVID—ProteGO Safe" application available for Android and iOS platforms. One hundred seventeen participants rated the application using the translated scale and re-rated it.
Results:
Results:
The conceptual equivalence of all items and subscales of the original uMARS and its Polish version was confirmed. The translated uMARS scale exhibited high reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.95). The perceived test-retest reliability and total influence score were acceptable, with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) of 0.59 and 0.65, respectively. The translated scale matched the reliability of the original. It can help users choose the best mHealth applications available in Poland and report their quality.
Conclusions:
The Polish version of uMARS was cross-culturally validated and as reliable as the original uMARS. The translated and validated uMARS tool can be used to evaluate mHealth applications in various aspects. Application developers can obtain reliable assessments of its components and areas that require further improvement and development to deliver higher-quality apps. The Polish version of uMARS can become a standard tool for evaluating the quality of the mHealth Applications in Poland.
Citation
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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.