Designing for social support in a mobile health application for children and adolescents

Abstract

The experience of relatedness to others is a key intrinsic motivator for human behavior. Therefore, social support can be seen as a promising factor for enhancing intrinsic motivation, thus, leading to an improvement in health-promoting behavior. That is why in this study, an effort towards the development and user-centered evaluation of different design concepts for realizing social support in a mobile health application was made. The goal of this application is to improve treatment adherence in children and adolescents diagnosed with scoliosis that have to wear a back brace as their prescribed orthotic treatment. The application, in its current form, helps patients to track their brace wear time and provides them with knowledge about scoliosis. Additional features have been created in the form of storyboards, offering the possibility to provide and receive different types of social support as defined in the social support theory by House, i.e., appraisal, informational and emotional support. To test the effects of these support types on intrinsic motivation, the storyboards were evaluated in an online study, with 33 children and adolescents diagnosed with scoliosis. Results show that for informational and appraisal support, significant main effects could be observed, while emotional support did not substantially improve intrinsic motivation. The study was helpful in prioritizing the next implementation steps for the application and to justify the decisions empirically with data from a user’s point of view.