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

ACCESS DATA

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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