Dataset Information

Prevalence of mobile phones and factors influencing usage by caregivers of young children in daily life and for health care in rural China: a mixed methods study.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

To capitalise on mHealth, we need to understand the use of mobile phones both in daily life and for health care.

Objective

To assess the prevalence and factors that influence usage of mobile phones by caregivers of young children.

Materials and methods

A mixed methods approach was used, whereby a survey (N=1854) and semi-structured interviews (N=17) were conducted concurrently. The quantitative and qualitative data obtained were compared and integrated. Participants were caregivers of young children in Zhao County, Hebei Province, China.

Results

Four main themes were found: (i) trends in mobile phone ownership; (ii) usage of mobile phone functions; (iii) factors influencing replying to text messages; and (iv) uses of mobile phones for health care. The majority of 1,854 survey participants (1,620; 87.4%) used mobile phones, but usage was much higher among mothers (1,433; 92.6%) and fathers (41; 100.0%) compared to grandparents (142; 54.6%). Parents were able to send text messages, grandparents often not. Factors influencing the decision to reply to text messages in daily life were checking the mobile phone, trusting the sender, emotion or feeling when receiving a text message, the importance of replying and ease of use of text messages. Of 1,620 survey participants who used a mobile phone, about one in four (432; 26.7%) had used it for health care in the past three months and most (1,110; 93.5%) of 1,187 who had not wished to use their phone to receive health information.

Conclusion

We found that usage of mobile phones is high, several factors influencing usage and an interest of caregivers to use phones for health care in Zhao County, rural China, which can be used to inform studies in settings with similar characteristics. Future work needs to assess factors influencing mobile phone usage in-depth to optimize experiences of users for specific mHealth-based interventions.

SUBMITTER: van Velthoven MH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4366174 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Prevalence of mobile phones and factors influencing usage by caregivers of young children in daily life and for health care in rural China: a mixed methods study.

van Velthoven Michelle Helena MH Li Ye Y Wang Wei W Chen Li L Du Xiaozhen X Wu Qiong Q Zhang Yanfeng Y Rudan Igor I Car Josip J

PloS one 20150319 3

<h4>Introduction</h4>To capitalise on mHealth, we need to understand the use of mobile phones both in daily life and for health care.<h4>Objective</h4>To assess the prevalence and factors that influence usage of mobile phones by caregivers of young children.<h4>Materials and methods</h4>A mixed methods approach was used, whereby a survey (N=1854) and semi-structured interviews (N=17) were conducted concurrently. The quantitative and qualitative data obtained were compared and integrated. Partici ...[more]

PMID: 25789477

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND: Given the ubiquity of mobile phones, their use to support healthcare in the Indian context is inevitable. It is however necessary to assess end-user perceptions regarding mobile health interventions especially in the rural Indian context prior to its use in healthcare. This would contextualize the use of mobile phone communication for health to 70% of the country's population that resides in rural India. OBJECTIVES: To explore the acceptability of delivering healthcare interventions through mobile phones among users in a village in rural Bangalore. METHODS: This was an exploratory study of 488 mobile phone users, residing in a village, near Bangalore city, Karnataka, South India. A pretested, translated, interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain data on mobile phone usage patterns and acceptability of the mobile phone, as a tool for health-related communication. The data is described using basic statistical measures. RESULTS: The primary use of mobile phones was to make or receive phone calls (100%). Text messaging (SMS) was used by only 70 (14%) of the respondents. Most of the respondents, 484 (99%), were willing to receive health-related information on their mobile phones and did not consider receiving such information, an intrusion into their personal life. While receiving reminders for drug adherence was acceptable to most 479 (98%) of our respondents, 424 (89%) preferred voice calls alone to other forms of communication. Nearly all were willing to use their mobile phones to communicate with health personnel in emergencies and 367 (75%) were willing to consult a doctor via the phone in an acute illness. Factors such as sex, English literacy, employment status, and presence of chronic disease affected preferences regarding mode and content of communication. CONCLUSION: The mobile phone, as a tool for receiving health information and supporting healthcare through mHealth interventions was acceptable in the rural Indian context.

Project description:BackgroundApproximately 60%-80% of the primary care visits have a psychological stress component, but only 3% of patients receive stress management advice during these visits. Given recent advances in natural language processing, there is renewed interest in mental health chatbots. Conversational agents that can understand a user's problems and deliver advice that mitigates the effects of daily stress could be an effective public health tool. However, such systems are complex to build and costly to develop.ObjectiveTo address these challenges, our aim is to develop and evaluate a fully automated mobile suite of shallow chatbots-we call them Popbots-that may serve as a new species of chatbots and further complement human assistance in an ecosystem of stress management support.MethodsAfter conducting an exploratory Wizard of Oz study (N=14) to evaluate the feasibility of a suite of multiple chatbots, we conducted a web-based study (N=47) to evaluate the implementation of our prototype. Each participant was randomly assigned to a different chatbot designed on the basis of a proven cognitive or behavioral intervention method. To measure the effectiveness of the chatbots, the participants' stress levels were determined using self-reported psychometric evaluations (eg, web-based daily surveys and Patient Health Questionnaire-4). The participants in these studies were recruited through email and enrolled on the web, and some of them participated in follow-up interviews that were conducted in person or on the web (as necessary).ResultsOf the 47 participants, 31 (66%) completed the main study. The findings suggest that the users viewed the conversations with our chatbots as helpful or at least neutral and came away with increasingly positive sentiment toward the use of chatbots for proactive stress management. Moreover, those users who used the system more often (ie, they had more than or equal to the median number of conversations) noted a decrease in depression symptoms compared with those who used the system less often based on a Wilcoxon signed-rank test (W=91.50; Z=-2.54; P=.01; r=0.47). The follow-up interviews with a subset of the participants indicated that half of the common daily stressors could be discussed with chatbots, potentially reducing the burden on human coping resources.ConclusionsOur work suggests that suites of shallow chatbots may offer benefits for both users and designers. As a result, this study's contributions include the design and evaluation of a novel suite of shallow chatbots for daily stress management, a summary of benefits and challenges associated with random delivery of multiple conversational interventions, and design guidelines and directions for future research into similar systems, including authoring chatbot systems and artificial intelligence-enabled recommendation algorithms.

Project description:BACKGROUND:The HIV epidemiology in South Africa reveals stark age and gender disparities, with young women being the most vulnerable to HIV acquisition in 2017. Evaluation of HIV exposure is a challenge in HIV prevention research. Intermittent in-clinic interviewer-administered risk behaviour assessments are utilised but may be limited by social desirability and recall biases. We piloted a mobile phone application for daily self-report of sexual risk behaviour in fifty 18-25 year old women at risk of HIV infection enrolled in HIV Vaccine Trials Network 915 (HVTN 915) in Soweto, South Africa. Through a mixed-methods investigation, we explored barriers and facilitators to completing daily mobile phone surveys among HVTN 915 study participants and staff. METHODS:We analysed quantitative data on barriers and facilitators to mobile phone study completion collected during the larger HVTN 915 study as well as two post-study focus group discussions (FGDs) with fifteen former participants with a median age of 24 years (IQR 23-25) and six individual in-depth interviews (IDIs) with HVTN 915 staff. FGDs and IDIs utilised semi-structured interview guides, were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated to English. After coding, thematic analysis was performed. RESULTS:The main facilitator for daily mobile phone survey completion assessed across 336 follow-up visits for 49 participants was the daily short message system (SMS) reminders (93%, 312/336). Across 336 visits, 31/49 (63%) retained participants reported barriers to completion of daily mobile phone surveys: forgetting (20%, 12/49), being too busy (19%, 11/49) and the survey being an inconvenience (15%, 9/49). Five main themes were identified during the coding of IDIs and FGDs: (1) facilitators of mobile phone survey completion, such as daily SMS reminders and follow up calls for non-completers; (2) barriers to mobile phone survey completion, including partner, time-related and technical barriers; (3) power of incentives; (4) response bias in providing sensitive information, and (5) recommendations for future mobile phone based interventions. CONCLUSION:Despite our enthusiasm to use innovation to optimise sexual risk assessments, technical and practical solutions are required to improve implementation. We recommend further engagement with participants to optimise this approach and to further understand social desirability bias and study incentives in sexual risk reporting.

Project description:BackgroundThe shortage of medical resources in rural China reflects the health inequity in resource-limited settings, whereas telemedicine could provide opportunities to fill this gap. However, evidence of patient acceptance of telemedicine services from low- and middle-income countries is still lacking.ObjectiveWe aimed to understand the profile of patient end-user telemedicine use and identify factors influencing telemedicine service use in rural China.MethodsOur study followed a mixed methods approach, with a quantitative cross-sectional survey followed by in-depth semistructured interviews to describe telemedicine use and its associated factors among rural residents in Guangdong Province, China. In the quantitative analysis, explanatory variables included environmental and context factors, household-level factors, individual sociodemographic factors, access to digital health care, and health needs and demand factors. We conducted univariate and multivariate analyses using Firth logistic regression to examine the correlations of telemedicine uptake. A thematic approach was used, guided by the Social Cognitive Theory for the qualitative analysis.ResultsA total of 2101 households were recruited for the quantitative survey. With a mean age of 61.4 (SD 14.41) years, >70% (1364/2101, 72.94%) of the household respondents were male. Less than 1% (14/2101, 0.67%) of the respondents reported experience of using telemedicine. The quantitative results supported that villagers living with family members who had a fever in the past 2 weeks (adjusted odds ratio 6.96, 95% CI 2.20-21.98; P=.001) or having smartphones or computers (adjusted odds ratio 3.71, 95% CI 0.64-21.32; P=.14) had marginally higher telemedicine uptake, whereas the qualitative results endorse these findings. The results of qualitative interviews (n=27) also supplemented the potential barriers to telemedicine use from the lack of knowledge, trust, demand, low self-efficacy, and sufficient physical and social support.ConclusionsThis study found extremely low use of telemedicine in rural China and identified potential factors affecting telemedicine uptake. The main barriers to telemedicine adoption among rural residents were found, including lack of knowledge, trust, demand as well as low self-efficacy, and insufficient physical and social support. Our study also suggests strategies to facilitate telemedicine engagement in low-resource settings: improving digital literacy and self-efficacy, building trust, and strengthening telemedicine infrastructure support.

Project description:BackgroundAn important issue for mHealth evaluation is the lack of information for sample size calculations.ObjectiveTo explore factors that influence sample size calculations for mHealth-based studies and to suggest strategies for increasing the participation rate.MethodsWe explored factors influencing recruitment and follow-up of participants (caregivers of children) in an mHealth text messaging data collection cross-over study. With help of village doctors, we recruited 1026 (25%) caregivers of children under five out of the 4170 registered. To explore factors influencing recruitment and provide recommendations for improving recruitment, we conducted semi-structured interviews with village doctors. Of the 1014 included participants, 662 (65%) responded to the first question about willingness to participate, 538 (53%) responded to the first survey question and 356 (35%) completed the text message survey. To explore factors influencing follow-up and provide recommendations for improving follow-up, we conducted interviews with participants. We added views from the researchers who were involved in the study to contextualize the findings.ResultsWE FOUND SEVERAL FACTORS INFLUENCING RECRUITMENT RELATED TO THE FOLLOWING THEMES: experiences with recruitment, village doctors' work, village doctors' motivations, caregivers' characteristics, caregivers' motivations. Village doctors gave several recommendations for ways to recruit more caregivers and we added our views to these. We found the following factors influencing follow-up: mobile phone usage, ability to use mobile phone, problems with mobile phone, checking mobile phone, available time, paying back text message costs, study incentives, subjective norm, culture, trust, perceived usefulness of process, perceived usefulness of outcome, perceived ease of use, attitude, behavioural intention to use, and actual use. From our perspective, factors influencing follow-up were: different caregivers participating in face-to-face and text message survey, sending text messages manually, participants responding incorrectly, and technical issues. Participants provided several recommendations for improving follow-up and we added our views to these.ConclusionsThis is the first study to evaluate factors influencing recruitment and follow-up of participants in an mHealth study in a middle-income setting. More work is needed to assess effectiveness of our suggested strategies. This work would improve evaluation of mHealth interventions.

Dataset Information

Prevalence of mobile phones and factors influencing usage by caregivers of young children in daily life and for health care in rural China: a mixed methods study.

Introduction

Objective

Materials and methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Prevalence of mobile phones and factors influencing usage by caregivers of young children in daily life and for health care in rural China: a mixed methods study.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets