Dataset Information

Recruitment and Ongoing Engagement in a UK Smartphone Study Examining the Association Between Weather and Pain: Cohort Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The huge increase in smartphone use heralds an enormous opportunity for epidemiology research, but there is limited evidence regarding long-term engagement and attrition in mobile health (mHealth) studies.

Objective

The objective of this study was to examine how representative the Cloudy with a Chance of Pain study population is of wider chronic-pain populations and to explore patterns of engagement among participants during the first 6 months of the study.

Methods

Participants in the United Kingdom who had chronic pain (?3 months) and enrolled between January 20, 2016 and January 29, 2016 were eligible if they were aged ?17 years and used the study app to report any of 10 pain-related symptoms during the study period. Participant characteristics were compared with data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) 2011. Distinct clusters of engagement over time were determined using first-order hidden Markov models, and participant characteristics were compared between the clusters.

Results

Compared with the data from the HSE, our sample comprised a higher proportion of women (80.51%, 5129/6370 vs 55.61%, 4782/8599) and fewer persons at the extremes of age (16-34 and 75+). Four clusters of engagement were identified: high (13.60%, 865/6370), moderate (21.76%, 1384/6370), low (39.35%, 2503/6370), and tourists (25.44%, 1618/6370), between which median days of data entry ranged from 1 (interquartile range; IQR: 1-1; tourist) to 149 (124-163; high). Those in the high-engagement cluster were typically older, whereas those in the tourist cluster were mostly male. Few other differences distinguished the clusters.

Conclusions

Cloudy with a Chance of Pain demonstrates a rapid and successful recruitment of a large, representative, and engaged sample of people with chronic pain and provides strong evidence to suggest that smartphones could provide a viable alternative to traditional data collection methods.

SUBMITTER: Druce KL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5688244 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Recruitment and Ongoing Engagement in a UK Smartphone Study Examining the Association Between Weather and Pain: Cohort Study.

Druce Katie L KL McBeth John J van der Veer Sabine N SN Selby David A DA Vidgen Bertie B Georgatzis Konstantinos K Hellman Bruce B Lakshminarayana Rashmi R Chowdhury Afiqul A Schultz David M DM Sanders Caroline C Sergeant Jamie C JC Dixon William G WG

JMIR mHealth and uHealth 20171101 11

<h4>Background</h4>The huge increase in smartphone use heralds an enormous opportunity for epidemiology research, but there is limited evidence regarding long-term engagement and attrition in mobile health (mHealth) studies.<h4>Objective</h4>The objective of this study was to examine how representative the Cloudy with a Chance of Pain study population is of wider chronic-pain populations and to explore patterns of engagement among participants during the first 6 months of the study.<h4>Methods</ ...[more]

PMID: 29092810

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Dataset Information

Recruitment and Ongoing Engagement in a UK Smartphone Study Examining the Association Between Weather and Pain: Cohort Study.

Background

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Recruitment and Ongoing Engagement in a UK Smartphone Study Examining the Association Between Weather and Pain: Cohort Study.

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