Validation of a Conceptual framework to Personalize a Mobile Application for Behavioral Change in the Health Domain: protocol for a cross-sectional study (Preprint)

Background: Although mobile health apps (mHealth) has the potential to motivate people to adopt healthier behaviors, many of them fail to maintain these behavior over time. This long-term adherence can be improved by personalizing the proposed interventions. Based on the literature, we have created a conceptual framework guiding the selection of appropriate functionalities according to the user's profile. Objective: This cross-sectional study aims to check if the relationships linking functionalities and profiles proposed in our conceptual framework are confirmed by the preferences of users collected through questionnaires. Methods: An online questionnaire lead participants to discover several functionalities of a mobile app aiming to foster healthier behavior. The participants must select the 5 functionalities they consider as the most relevant to motivate a healthier behavior and evaluate them on a score ranging from 0 to 100. Results: Data collection was conducted between July 2021 and December 2021. Conclusions: This protocol will allow us to define the functionalities that are preferred by users according to their profile according to our conceptual framework.