Abstract
Abstract Improving the physical and mental health of nursing students is essential to shaping and sustaining healthy behaviors prior to joining the demanding workforce. Leveraging technology such as mHealth apps holds great promise in facilitating behavior change and improving healthy lifestyles in nursing students. In order to create these mHealth applications that will engage nursing students we must first identify the predictors of willingness to use mHealth within this population. Evaluation of psychological, attitudinal and health-related correlates of mHealth can produce predictors of willingness to use mHealth which can influence the use and long-term engagement of mHealth apps. Psychological attributes such as hope, plays a role in the willingness to use mHealth apps in nursing students and may be the secret ingredient to keeping them engaged in the utilization of an mHealth app. Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristics and influencing factors of college nursing students’ willingness to utilize mHealth for health promotion. We hope by identifying predictors of willingness to use mHealth apps we can increase engagement and improvement attrition rates in mHealth interventions targeting health promotion in nursing students. The research questions included: 1) What are the associations between user characteristics and mHealth use? 2) How is nursing students’ typical use of mHealth predicted by their willingness to use an mHealth app, desire for text nudging, positive psychology characteristics, BMI classification, and demographic characteristics. Conclusion Preliminary data analysis illustrates the role hope plays in the willingness to engage in mHealth use to improve health from a college nursing student perspective. Increasing the end-users’ hope and consistently providing them with positive hope constructs through nudging might be the secret ingredient to keeping them engaged in utilization of an mHealth app. This illustrates one importance of promoting and building positive psychology variables in college students to encourage adherence to behaviors that lead to positive health outcomes. Implementation of an mHealth app which increases hope and helps establish healthy behaviors may enable nursing students to maintain these healthy habits, leading the way to a new generation of healthier nurses, ultimately increasing the safety for patients under their care.
Recommended Citation
Sittig, Scott; Campbell, Matt; and Fruh, Sharon, "Willingness to Utilize mHealth for Health Promotion: An Evaluation of Influencing Factors Among College Nursing Students’" (2019). AMCIS 2019 Proceedings. 27.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/treo/treos/27
Willingness to Utilize mHealth for Health Promotion: An Evaluation of Influencing Factors Among College Nursing Students’
Abstract Improving the physical and mental health of nursing students is essential to shaping and sustaining healthy behaviors prior to joining the demanding workforce. Leveraging technology such as mHealth apps holds great promise in facilitating behavior change and improving healthy lifestyles in nursing students. In order to create these mHealth applications that will engage nursing students we must first identify the predictors of willingness to use mHealth within this population. Evaluation of psychological, attitudinal and health-related correlates of mHealth can produce predictors of willingness to use mHealth which can influence the use and long-term engagement of mHealth apps. Psychological attributes such as hope, plays a role in the willingness to use mHealth apps in nursing students and may be the secret ingredient to keeping them engaged in the utilization of an mHealth app. Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristics and influencing factors of college nursing students’ willingness to utilize mHealth for health promotion. We hope by identifying predictors of willingness to use mHealth apps we can increase engagement and improvement attrition rates in mHealth interventions targeting health promotion in nursing students. The research questions included: 1) What are the associations between user characteristics and mHealth use? 2) How is nursing students’ typical use of mHealth predicted by their willingness to use an mHealth app, desire for text nudging, positive psychology characteristics, BMI classification, and demographic characteristics. Conclusion Preliminary data analysis illustrates the role hope plays in the willingness to engage in mHealth use to improve health from a college nursing student perspective. Increasing the end-users’ hope and consistently providing them with positive hope constructs through nudging might be the secret ingredient to keeping them engaged in utilization of an mHealth app. This illustrates one importance of promoting and building positive psychology variables in college students to encourage adherence to behaviors that lead to positive health outcomes. Implementation of an mHealth app which increases hope and helps establish healthy behaviors may enable nursing students to maintain these healthy habits, leading the way to a new generation of healthier nurses, ultimately increasing the safety for patients under their care.