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Validation of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS)
Yannik Terhorst1,2, Paula Philippi2, Lasse B Sander3
1Department of Research Methods, Institute of Psychology and Education, University Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
Plos One
|November 2, 2020
Summary
The Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) effectively assesses mobile health app quality, demonstrating good reliability and objectivity. This validated tool can enhance transparency for patients and healthcare providers regarding app quality.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Digital Health
- Mobile Health Applications
Background:
- The rapid growth of the mobile health app (MHA) market necessitates robust tools for assessing app content and quality.
- Existing assessment instruments for MHAs require further validation, particularly concerning their metric properties.
- The Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) is widely used but lacks comprehensive validation of its construct and concurrent validity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the construct validity, concurrent validity, reliability, and objectivity of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS).
- To confirm the metric quality of MARS for assessing mobile health applications.
Main Methods:
- Pooled data from 15 international app quality reviews involving 1,299 MHAs across 15 health domains.
- Construct validity assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with various fit indices (RMSEA, CFI, TLI, SRMR).
- Concurrent validity examined by correlating MARS scores with the ENLIGHT tool; reliability via Omega; objectivity via intra-class correlation (ICC).
Main Results:
- Confirmatory factor analysis supported a bifactor model for MARS (RMSEA=0.074, TLI=0.922, CFI=0.940, SRMR=0.059).
- MARS demonstrated good to excellent reliability (Omega=0.79–0.93) and high objectivity (ICC=0.82).
- MARS showed significant correlations with ENLIGHT, supporting its concurrent validity (p<.05).
Conclusions:
- The metric evaluation confirms MARS's suitability for assessing mobile health app quality.
- MARS can enhance transparency regarding MHA quality for healthcare stakeholders and patients.
- Future research should investigate MARS's re-test reliability and predictive validity.
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