Co-designing a just-in-time adaptive mHealth intervention to improve parental support for child physical activity...

Area of Science:

• Child Health and Behavior
• Digital Health Interventions
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Parental support is crucial for children's physical activity (PA).
• Mobile health (mHealth) just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) offer personalized parental support for PA, but research is limited.
• Co-designing such interventions is essential for effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the co-design process of a family-based JITAI app aimed at enhancing parental support for children's PA.
• To evaluate the resources needed for co-designing this app using the no-code platform, Pathverse.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Integrate, Design, Assess, Share (IDEAS) and Multi-Process Action Control (M-PAC) frameworks.
• Conducted semi-structured interviews with parents of children aged 8-12 years not meeting PA guidelines (Phase 1).
• Incorporated parental feedback for app features, JITAI tailoring, and prototype refinement (Phase 2) using Pathverse.

Main Results:

• Six parents actively contributed to shaping the app design, emphasizing family-centered content, gamification, and varied PA options.
• Parental barriers (e.g., time, weather) informed the JITAI tailoring strategies.
• The M-PAC framework guided the integration of behavior change techniques like self-monitoring and social support.

Conclusions:

• A family-based JITAI app for supporting children's PA was successfully co-designed using the M-PAC framework and Pathverse.
• The co-design process required 320 hours over four months, including content development and testing.
• This study establishes a foundation for future research and testing of the developed JITAI app.