The Persian Version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS-FA): Development and Validation Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND There are 110 million Farsi speakers worldwide who have access to a growing mobile app market. Despite restrictions and international sanctions, the internal mHealth app market in Iran is growing, especially for Android-based apps. However, there are no guidelines for developing health apps that meet international quality standards. There are also no tools in Farsi that assess health app quality. Developers and researchers who operate in Farsi could benefit from such quality assessment tools to improve their outputs. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Mobile App Rating Scale in Farsi (MARS-Fa). This study also evaluated the validity and reliability of the newly developed MARS-Fa tool. METHODS We used a well-established method to translate and back-translate the MARS-Fa tool with a group of Iranian and international experts in Health Information Technology and Psychology. We validated the MARS-Fa with a sample of 92 apps addressing smartphone addiction using two trained reviewers. We reported inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity of the validation exercise. RESULTS Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .84 for the total MARS-Fa and subjective quality, indicating excellent internal consistency. Spearman-Brown split-half reliability indicators were very good and excellent (.79 to .93). The MARS-Fa showed excellent inter-rater reliability (ICC=.91) and test-retest reliability (r=.94). The inter-item correlation coefficients among 18 items were greater than 0.20, suggesting good construct and discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS The MARS-Fa tool can be reliably used to evaluate health apps by trained reviewers who speak Farsi. Further research should be done to validate the tool with health apps targeting other health problems.