Open Collections

Lin, Zi

University of British Columbia

The rise in mobile phone use and the increased expectations in managing psychological well-being present an opportunity for applications to work as an alternative delivery medium for mindfulness practices. While mindfulness applications have the potential to deliver a widespread positive impact on mental health, their quality needs to be assessed. This study aimed to understand the quality of currently available mindfulness apps in the Google Play and iTunes stores and evaluate their features and characteristics. In detail, this study introduced mainstream mindfulness theories and principles, assessed if selected mindfulness apps followed the principles, and examined if the assessment results corresponded with user ratings. Using a systematic review framework, this study manually evaluated a collection of 29 mindfulness apps based on a set of mindfulness app design criteria and used the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient to determine if the quality ratings corresponded with user ratings. It was found that less than a quarter of selected apps did not provide their source information for their in-app content, apps covered an average of four out of seven in-app functionalities noted in the mindfulness app design criteria, and the quality ratings based on that design criteria did not significantly correlate with average user ratings. The study results also suggested that user ratings could not fully represent the quality of the in-app content and that other factors could influence user satisfaction rates.

Text

2021-08-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/79425

Library and Information Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/