Validation of a Conceptual framework to Personalize a Mobile Application for Behavioral Change in the Health Domain: protocol for a cross-sectional study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Although mobile health apps (mHealth) has the potential to motivate people to adopt healthier behaviors, many of them fail to maintain these behavior over time. This long-term adherence can be improved by personalizing the proposed interventions. Based on the literature, we have created a conceptual framework guiding the selection of appropriate functionalities according to the user's profile. OBJECTIVE This cross-sectional study aims to check if the relationships linking functionalities and profiles proposed in our conceptual framework are confirmed by the preferences of users collected through questionnaires. METHODS An online questionnaire lead participants to discover several functionalities of a mobile app aiming to foster healthier behavior. The participants must select the 5 functionalities they consider as the most relevant to motivate a healthier behavior and evaluate them on a score ranging from 0 to 100. RESULTS Data collection was conducted between July 2021 and December 2021. CONCLUSIONS This protocol will allow us to define the functionalities that are preferred by users according to their profile according to our conceptual framework.