Understanding the Acceptability of Health Apps among Adolescents: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Abstract Background Almost all adolescents aged 13 to 17 in the United States have access to a smartphone. While studies have commonly assessed the feasibility or usability of mobile health applications (“apps”), few have examined the acceptability of apps—whether individuals would actually use these health apps in their everyday lives—among adolescent populations. Objectives This qualitative study aims to understand how adolescents assess the acceptability of health apps in the context of their everyday lives. Methods Nineteen adolescents in grades 7 through 9 were asked to download a health app before participating in two semi-structured interviews 2 weeks apart. Seven domains from the Theoretical Framework of Acceptability were assessed: affective attitude, burden, ethicality, intervention coherence, opportunity costs, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy. A Grounded Theory approach was used to analyze data. Results The seven acceptability domains plus two additional themes, intervention expectations (what adolescents anticipated given their experiences with other apps) and peer norms (friends' beliefs and attitudes toward the intervention's health topic), were salient. Conclusion These nine domains of acceptability are relevant to adolescents and should be assessed during health app development by app developers and health researchers to improve adolescents' acceptability perceptions and potentially increase app usage.