Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Feb 13, 2025
Date Accepted: Jul 31, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Application of the Supportive Accountability Model in Digital Health Interventions: A Scoping Review
ABSTRACT
The Supportive Accountability Model (SAM) is a theoretical framework designed to enhance adherence to digital health interventions (DHIs) through the incorporation of structured human support. Guided by SAM, this scoping review answers the following research questions: (1) What is the extent of research on human support factors and their influence on engagement with and adherence to DHIs? (2) What is the extent of research applying SAM (i.e., accountability, bond, and legitimacy) to improve engagement with and adherence to DHIs? Results of analysis (N = 36) indicated that SAM was inconsistently applied to intervention designs. Some studies used human support as the mode of intervention delivery rather than as an adjunctive tool focusing on improving engagement and adherence, as proposed by SAM. Aside from accountability, there was also a lack of explicit focus on other constructs within the model (i.e., legitimacy and bond), which was intended to examine pathways that explain adherence to DHIs. In sum, the current scoping review helps us better understand current uses of human support in DHI adherence and identifies future research opportunities to optimize the engagement with these interventions.
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.