Cargando…

A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study

BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers are family members or close friends who provide unpaid help to individuals with acute or chronic health conditions so that they can manage daily life tasks. The greatest source of health information is the internet for meeting the needs of caregivers. However, informa...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Milios, Athena, McGrath, Patrick, Baillie, Hannah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32049064
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14496
_version_ 1783503431556661248
author Milios, Athena
McGrath, Patrick
Baillie, Hannah
author_facet Milios, Athena
McGrath, Patrick
Baillie, Hannah
author_sort Milios, Athena
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers are family members or close friends who provide unpaid help to individuals with acute or chronic health conditions so that they can manage daily life tasks. The greatest source of health information is the internet for meeting the needs of caregivers. However, information on the internet may not be scientifically valid, it may be written in language that is difficult to read, and is often in very large doses. 90Second Caregiver is a health letter whose aim is to disseminate knowledge to caregivers in a user-friendly, weekly format, in order to improve their wellbeing. OBJECTIVE: The main objective was to test a sample of 90Second Caregiver health letters in order to assess their usability and to optimize the design and content of the health letters. METHODS: Usability research themes were assessed using semi-structured phone interviews, incorporating the Think Aloud method with retrospective questioning. RESULTS: Usability was assessed in the context of five main themes: understandability and learnability, completeness, relevance, and quality and credibility of the health letter content, as well as design and format. Caregivers generally provided positive feedback regarding the usability of the letters. The usability feedback was used to refine 90Second Caregiver in order to improve the design and content of the series. Based on the results of this study, it may be of maximum benefit to target the series towards individuals who are new to caregiving or part-time caregivers, given that these caregivers of the sample found the letters more useful and relevant and had the most positive usability experiences. CONCLUSIONS: The findings assisted in the improvement of the 90Second Caregiver template, which will be used to create future health letters and refine the letters that have already been created. The findings have implications for who the 90Second Caregiver series should be targeting (ie, newer or part-time caregivers) in order to be maximally impactful in improving mental health and wellbeing-related outcomes for caregivers, such as self-efficacy and caregiving knowledge. The results of this study may be generalizable to the examination of other electronic health information formats, making them valuable to future researchers testing the usability of health information products. In addition, the methods used in this study are useful for usability hypothesis generation. Lastly, our 90Second delivery approach can generate information useful for a set of similar products (eg, weekly health letters targeted towards other conditions/populations).
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7055838
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher JMIR Publications
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-70558382020-03-16 A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study Milios, Athena McGrath, Patrick Baillie, Hannah JMIR Form Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Informal caregivers are family members or close friends who provide unpaid help to individuals with acute or chronic health conditions so that they can manage daily life tasks. The greatest source of health information is the internet for meeting the needs of caregivers. However, information on the internet may not be scientifically valid, it may be written in language that is difficult to read, and is often in very large doses. 90Second Caregiver is a health letter whose aim is to disseminate knowledge to caregivers in a user-friendly, weekly format, in order to improve their wellbeing. OBJECTIVE: The main objective was to test a sample of 90Second Caregiver health letters in order to assess their usability and to optimize the design and content of the health letters. METHODS: Usability research themes were assessed using semi-structured phone interviews, incorporating the Think Aloud method with retrospective questioning. RESULTS: Usability was assessed in the context of five main themes: understandability and learnability, completeness, relevance, and quality and credibility of the health letter content, as well as design and format. Caregivers generally provided positive feedback regarding the usability of the letters. The usability feedback was used to refine 90Second Caregiver in order to improve the design and content of the series. Based on the results of this study, it may be of maximum benefit to target the series towards individuals who are new to caregiving or part-time caregivers, given that these caregivers of the sample found the letters more useful and relevant and had the most positive usability experiences. CONCLUSIONS: The findings assisted in the improvement of the 90Second Caregiver template, which will be used to create future health letters and refine the letters that have already been created. The findings have implications for who the 90Second Caregiver series should be targeting (ie, newer or part-time caregivers) in order to be maximally impactful in improving mental health and wellbeing-related outcomes for caregivers, such as self-efficacy and caregiving knowledge. The results of this study may be generalizable to the examination of other electronic health information formats, making them valuable to future researchers testing the usability of health information products. In addition, the methods used in this study are useful for usability hypothesis generation. Lastly, our 90Second delivery approach can generate information useful for a set of similar products (eg, weekly health letters targeted towards other conditions/populations). JMIR Publications 2020-02-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7055838/ /pubmed/32049064 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14496 Text en ©Athena Milios, Patrick McGrath, Hannah Baillie. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (http://formative.jmir.org), 12.02.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Milios, Athena
McGrath, Patrick
Baillie, Hannah
A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title_full A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title_fullStr A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title_full_unstemmed A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title_short A Weekly, Evidence-Based Health Letter for Caregivers (90Second Caregiver): Usability Study
title_sort weekly, evidence-based health letter for caregivers (90second caregiver): usability study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32049064
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14496
work_keys_str_mv AT miliosathena aweeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy
AT mcgrathpatrick aweeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy
AT bailliehannah aweeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy
AT miliosathena weeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy
AT mcgrathpatrick weeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy
AT bailliehannah weeklyevidencebasedhealthletterforcaregivers90secondcaregiverusabilitystudy