Workshop: Longitudinal mHealth studies – maximising recruitment and understanding attrition

Seven in ten people now own a smartphone, which provides major opportunities for health research. Smartphone applications, however, typically have poor sustained engagement, possibly leading to high dropout rates when used for research. It is therefore important to employ strategies engage recruited participants.
The organisers will share experiences in recruiting and engaging participants, gained during the study Cloudy with a Chance of Pain. This is an innovative population smartphone study to investigate the association between the weather and symptoms in people with arthritis and other chronic pain. Over 13,000 participants have been recruited since January 2016, amassing over 4m symptom scores. The organisers will share experiences in co-creation of mHealth smartphone apps, maintaining digital engagement, analysis of attrition and its implications. Participants will discuss best practices, as well as possible pathways for developing further models and methods for increasing, measuring and reporting engagement.