Measuring engagement to ehealth interventions: Testing the Twente engagement to ehealth technologies scale (tweets)

Engagement is seen as an important concept within eHealth technology and often regarded as a mediator for the effectiveness of these interventions. Recent studies have shown that engagement is more than just the usage of a technology, but there is discussion on what engagement entails precisely within this context and how to measure it. It has been suggested that a self-report scale is an accessible way to get a more nuanced picture of engagement. However, no such validated, theory-based scale for engagement to eHealth technologies exists yet.
Based on a systematic review into the concept of engagement in different fields, and interviews among engaged health app users, a first version of the TWente Engagement to Ehealth Technologies Scale (TWEETS) was developed. This scale consists of nine items measuring behavioral engagement (e.g. routinely using the intervention), cognitive engagement (e.g. feeling motivated to reach your health goals by the intervention) and affective engagement (e.g. enjoying seeing progress in the intervention).
This scale has been pilot tested in a study where participants are asked to use a (any) step counter app on their smartphone for two weeks and fill out different measures on engagement and related concepts after one day, one week and two weeks. Around 250 participants (mainly students at the University of Twente) have completed all surveys. First results of the performance of the TWEETS regarding factor structure, correlation with related measures (e.g. involvement, usage, enjoyment) and with outcomes (i.e. number of steps) will be presented at the conference.