Mobile Health Interventions: Exploring the Use of Common Relationship Factors

The use of mobile health (mHealth) interventions has risen dramatically over the past two decades. It is important to consider mHealth intervention research within the broader therapy outcome literature. Among other key findings, this broader literature suggests that common relationship factors such as empathy, positive regard, and genuineness may play a critical role in therapy effectiveness. These findings raise intriguing questions for mobile interventions. For example, can mobile interventions incorporate aspects of common factors to augment their efficacy? Will the absence of relationship-based common factors make mobile interventions less effective? This viewpoint paper addresses these questions as well as related issues such as how to operationalize relationship qualities in the context of a mobile intervention and whether common relationship factors apply to computers or computerized narrators. The paper concludes by outlining a future research agenda guided by theory and empirical studies.