Research
Iterative development of MobileMums: a physical activity intervention for women with young children
- † Equal contributors
1 School of Population Health, Cancer Prevention Research Centre, The University of Queensland, Herston, Queensland, Australia
2 School of Psychology, Queensland Centre for Mothers and Babies, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
3 School of Public Health, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Queensland, Australia
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2012, 9:151 doi:10.1186/1479-5868-9-151
Published: 20 December 2012Abstract
Background
To describe the iterative development process and final version of ‘MobileMums’: a physical activity intervention for women with young children (<5 years) delivered primarily via mobile telephone (mHealth) short messaging service (SMS).
Methods
MobileMums development followed the five steps outlined in the mHealth development and evaluation framework: 1) conceptualization (critique of literature and theory); 2) formative research (focus groups, n= 48); 3) pre-testing (qualitative pilot of intervention components, n= 12); 4) pilot testing (pilot RCT, n= 88); and, 5) qualitative evaluation of the refined intervention (n= 6).
Results
Key findings identified throughout the development process that shaped the MobileMums program were the need for: behaviour change techniques to be grounded in Social Cognitive Theory; tailored SMS content; two-way SMS interaction; rapport between SMS sender and recipient; an automated software platform to generate and send SMS; and, flexibility in location of a face-to-face delivered component.
Conclusions
The final version of MobileMums is flexible and adaptive to individual participant’s physical activity goals, expectations and environment. MobileMums is being evaluated in a community-based randomised controlled efficacy trial (ACTRN12611000481976).
