School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia.
Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health, Curtin University, Perth 6845, Australia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 5;19(9):5626. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19095626.
Participant engagement is an important consideration in mHealth interventions and there are no standardised measurements available to guide researchers. This paper describes the engagement index customised for the Milk Man app, a mobile app designed to engage fathers with breastfeeding and parenting information. Participants were recruited from maternity hospitals in Perth, Western Australia. An engagement index with scores ranging from 0 to 100 was calculated. Kaplan Meier survival analysis was used to determine difference in duration of exclusive breastfeeding, and Pearson's chi square analysis was conducted to investigate the association of engagement level with demographic characteristics and exclusive breastfeeding at 6 weeks. While overall, partners of participants who installed Milk Man were less likely to have ceased exclusive breastfeeding at any time point from birth to six weeks postpartum, this result was modest and of borderline significance (log rank test = 0.052; Breslow = 0.046; Tarone-Ware = 0.049). The mean engagement score was 29.7% (range 1-80%), median 27.6%. Engagement level had no impact on duration of exclusive breastfeeding and demographic factors were not associated with engagement level. This research demonstrates a range of metrics that can be used to quantify participant engagement. However, more research is needed to identify ways of measuring effective engagement.
参与者参与度是移动健康干预措施中的一个重要考虑因素，但目前没有可用的标准化测量方法来指导研究人员。本文介绍了为 Milk Man 应用程序定制的参与指数，该应用程序旨在为父亲提供母乳喂养和育儿信息。参与者是从西澳大利亚珀斯的妇产医院招募的。计算了得分范围在 0 到 100 之间的参与指数。采用 Kaplan-Meier 生存分析来确定纯母乳喂养持续时间的差异，采用 Pearson's chi 平方分析来研究参与水平与人口统计学特征和 6 周时纯母乳喂养的关系。虽然总体而言，从出生到产后 6 周，安装 Milk Man 的参与者的伴侣在任何时间点停止纯母乳喂养的可能性较小，但这一结果适度且具有边缘显著性（对数秩检验 = 0.052；Breslow = 0.046；Tarone-Ware = 0.049）。平均参与得分 29.7%（范围 1-80%），中位数 27.6%。参与水平对纯母乳喂养持续时间没有影响，人口统计学因素与参与水平无关。本研究展示了一系列可以用来量化参与者参与度的指标。然而，需要进一步研究来确定衡量有效参与度的方法。
