Recruitment and Ongoing Engagement in a UK Smartphone Study Examining the Association Between Weather and Pain: Cohort Study

• Main Authors: Druce, Katie L (Author), McBeth, John (Author), van der Veer, Sabine N (Author), Selby, David A (Author), Vidgen, Bertie (Author), Georgatzis, Konstantinos (Author), Hellman, Bruce (Author), Lakshminarayana, Rashmi (Author), Chowdhury, Afiqul (Author), Schultz, David M (Author), Sanders, Caroline (Author), Sergeant, Jamie C (Author), Dixon, William G (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: JMIR Publications, 2017-11-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 2291-5222; 10.2196/mhealth.8162
• Keywords: Information technology; T58.5-58.64; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270
• Source: JMIR mHealth and uHealth, Vol 5, Iss 11, p e168 (2017)

BackgroundThe huge increase in smartphone use heralds an enormous opportunity for epidemiology research, but there is limited evidence regarding long-term engagement and attrition in mobile health (mHealth) studies. ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to examine how representative the Cloudy with a Chance of Pain study population is of wider chronic-pain populations and to explore patterns of engagement among participants during the first 6 months of the study. MethodsParticipants in the United Kingdom who had chronic pain (≥3 months) and enrolled between January 20, 2016 and January 29, 2016 were eligible if they were aged ≥17 years and used the study app to report any of 10 pain-related symptoms during the study period. Participant characteristics were compared with data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) 2011. Distinct clusters of engagement over time were determined using first-order hidden Markov models, and participant characteristics were compared between the clusters. ResultsCompared with the data from the HSE, our sample comprised a higher proportion of women (80.51%, 5129/6370 vs 55.61%, 4782/8599) and fewer persons at the extremes of age (16-34 and 75+). Four clusters of engagement were identified: high (13.60%, 865/6370), moderate (21.76%, 1384/6370), low (39.35%, 2503/6370), and tourists (25.44%, 1618/6370), between which median days of data entry ranged from 1 (interquartile range; IQR: 1-1; tourist) to 149 (124-163; high). Those in the high-engagement cluster were typically older, whereas those in the tourist cluster were mostly male. Few other differences distinguished the clusters. ConclusionsCloudy with a Chance of Pain demonstrates a rapid and successful recruitment of a large, representative, and engaged sample of people with chronic pain and provides strong evidence to suggest that smartphones could provide a viable alternative to traditional data collection methods.