Dr Brooke Brady1, Dr Lidan Zheng1, Miss Shally Zhou1, Mr Daniel Ashworth1, Professor Kaarin Anstey1
1The University Of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Introduction:
We aimed to develop and validate a bespoke research app to enable innovative life-course ageing research.
Methods:
The Labs Without Walls app was built using Apple ResearchKit and is available for iPhones running iOS13 and above. We sought to recruit a total of 240 Australian adults, stratified by age and sex. An Apple Watch was posted to all participants for use during the study. e-Consent was completed within the app. Once consented, participants completed 8-weeks of scheduled tasks, including a 30-minute baseline survey, daily surveys, regular game-like cognitive and sensory tasks, and an end-of-study user experience survey. Passive physiological and environmental data was collected using the Apple Watch and iPhone.
Results:
As of July 2022, 189 participants have consented to join the study. 10 have withdrawn their participation, indicating a 94.7% retention rate. Preliminary usability data suggests that 97.1% of participants found the study schedule manageable in the context of their daily life. 97.4% reported that the app was quite or extremely user-friendly. 99% reported that the app was enjoyable to use. The majority of participants said that the alert frequency was ‘just right’, or ‘could use more’. 37.9% of participants had at least a little difficulty setting up the paired watch. However, 96.1% reported that the watch was enjoyable to use.
Conclusion:
Labs Without Walls provides an acceptable and enjoyable platform to collect complex insights into the individual, social and environmental factors that impact life-course ageing among Australians aged 18 to 85 years.
Biography:
Dr Brady is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Psychology at UNSW Sydney. She works on a range of projects exploring the complexity of life-course ageing.