TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - Ortmann, Julia
A1  - Heise, Jana-Kristin
A1  - Janzen, Irina
A1  - Jenniches, Felix
A1  - Kemmling, Yvonne
A1  - Frömke, Cornelia
A1  - Castell, Stefanie
T1  - Suitability and user acceptance of the eResearch system “Prospective Monitoring and Management App (PIA)” — The example of an epidemiological study on infectious diseases
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Background
The eResearch system “Prospective Monitoring and Management App (PIA)” allows researchers to implement questionnaires on any topic and to manage biosamples. Currently, we use PIA in the longitudinal study ZIFCO (Integrated DZIF Infection Cohort within the German National Cohort) in Hannover (Germany) to investigate e.g. associations of risk factors and infectious diseases. Our aim was to assess user acceptance and compliance to determine suitability of PIA for epidemiological research on transient infectious diseases.

Methods
ZIFCO participants used PIA to answer weekly questionnaires on health status and report spontaneous onset of symptoms. In case of symptoms of a respiratory infection, the app requested participants to self-sample a nasal swab for viral analysis. To assess user acceptance, we implemented the System Usability Scale (SUS) and fitted a linear regression model on the resulting score. For investigation of compliance with submitting the weekly health questionnaires, we used a logistic regression model with binomial response.

Results
We analyzed data of 313 participants (median age 52.5 years, 52.4% women). An average SUS of 72.0 reveals good acceptance of PIA. Participants with a higher technology readiness score at the beginning of study participation also reported higher user acceptance. Overall compliance with submitting the weekly health questionnaires showed a median of 55.7%. Being female, of younger age and being enrolled for a longer time decreased the odds to respond. However, women over 60 had a higher chance to respond than women under 60, while men under 40 had the highest chance to respond. Compliance with nasal swab self-sampling was 77.2%.

Discussion
Our findings show that PIA is suitable for the use in epidemiologic studies with regular short questionnaires. Still, we will focus on user engagement and gamification for the further development of PIA to help incentivize regular and long-term participation.
KW  - age group
KW  - Altersgruppe
KW  - Fragebogen
KW  - questionnaire
KW  - respiratory infection
KW  - gastrointestinal infection
KW  - epidemiology
KW  - Germany
KW  - infectious desease
KW  - linear regression analysis
KW  - Infektionskrankheit
KW  - Epidemiologie
Y1  - 2023
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:960-opus4-24203
SN  - 1932-6203
SS  - 1932-6203
U6  - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-2420
DO  - https://doi.org/10.25968/opus-2420
VL  - 18
IS  - 1
SP  - 15
S1  - 15
ER  -