Dynamic Indicators of Adherence and Retention in Digital Health Studies: Insights from the Brighten Study (Preprint)

作者：Dylan Hamitouche, Youcef Barkat, Deven Parekh, Eva Hammer, David Benrimoh · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.2196/preprints.69464 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Impact of Technology on Adolescents、Digital Mental Health Interventions、Mobile Health and mHealth Applications

BACKGROUND Making optimal use of mobile health technologies requires the validation of digital biomarkers, which demands high levels of participant adherence and retention. However, current remote digital health studies have high attrition rates and low participant adherence, which may introduce bias and limit the generalizability of the findings. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study is to identify longitudinal indicators of participant retention and adherence, which may serve to develop strategies to improve data collection in digital health studies and improve understanding of how study cohorts are shaped by participant withdrawal and non-adherence. METHODS We performed secondary analyses on the Brighten study, which consisted of two remote, smartphone-based randomized controlled trials evaluating mobile apps for depression treatment, enrolling 2,193 participants. Participants were asked, after baseline assessment, to complete 7 digital questionnaires regularly. We assessed adherence to digital questionnaires, engagement (post-baseline participation), and retention rates (proportion of participants who continue completing questionnaires over time) as outcomes. We investigated the relationship between these outcomes and both static measures (e.g., demographics, average questionnaire scores) and dynamic measures (e.g., changes in questionnaire scores over time). RESULTS The study included 2201 participants, of whom 1093 completed at least one non-baseline q...