Developing smartphone apps for behavioural studies: The AlcoRisk app case study

Highlights

• Smartphone apps can observe health behaviours to inform policies and interventions.

• Ecological Momentary Assessment theory can guide designing such smartphone apps.

• The AlcoRisk app for observing alcohol consumption and risk taking was developed.

• A preliminary feasibility study indicates the AlcoRisk app can collect such data.

Abstract

Smartphone apps have emerged as valuable research tools to sample human behaviours at their time of occurrence within natural environments. Human behaviour sampling methods, such as Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), aim to facilitate research that is situated in ecologically valid real world environments rather than laboratory environments. Researchers have trialled a range of EMA smartphone apps to sample human behaviours such as dieting, physical activity and smoking. Software development processes for EMA smartphones apps, however, are not widely documented with little guidance provided for the integration of complex multidisciplinary behavioural and technical fields. In this paper, the AlcoRisk app for studying alcohol consumption and risk taking tendencies is presented alongside a software development process that integrates these multidisciplinary fields. The software development process consists of three stages including requirements analysis, feature and interface design followed by app implementation. Results from a preliminary feasibility study support the efficacy of the AlcoRisk app’s software development process.