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Translation and validation of the Italian Version of the User Version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (uMARS): questionnaire validation study (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 Health sciences are steadily developing apps to help people to have a correct lifestyle and, in case of chronic diseases, to help physicians to follow their patients. However, a proper validated tool to evaluate patients’ perception of apps’ usefulness, graphic and comfort to use it still lacks in many languages. At present time, there is an English validated questionnaire called User Version of the Mobile Application Rating Scale (uMARS).
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 Aim of the study is to translate and validate uMARS in Italian.
 
 
 METHODS
 uMARS questionnaire have been translated into Italian by an official translator from English. Then, questionnaire has been administrated to 100 smartphone users to evaluate the same App at time 0 and at time 1 (after 2 weeks). Paired t test, Pearson Correlation Coefficient,Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICCs) and Cronbach’s Alpha were used to evaluate Italian uMARS reliability and validity.
 
 
 RESULTS
 Subjects were 100, 52 male (52%) and 48 females (48%). Mean age was 22.8 (SD: 3.4). All the enrolled subjects answered to all questions both at time 0 and at time 1. Paired t test showed no statistically significant difference for each answer or answers group between time 0 and 1 (P>0.05). In detail, higher variability was observed for question E20, regarding the subjective evaluation of the app: “What is your overall (star) rating of the app?” T0 mean 3.7 (SD: 0.8) vs T1 mean 3.6 (SD:1.0) p=0.089. The lower variability was observed in the Information Section for question D16 “Credibility of source: does the information within the app seem to come from a credible source? “, T0 mean 3.6 (SD:1.1) T1 mean 3.6 (SD: 1.1) p=1.000. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.945, as all patients answered to all questions. Each question was furtherly assessed through Pearson correlation coefficient, which demonstrated high reliability, with significant P (<0.05) and Pearson Coefficients higher than 0.7. Similarly, ICC, which was always higher than 0.750, confirmed an excellent test-rest reliability.
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 Our results allow the validation of uMARS in Italian language and it may become a reliable and useful tool to evaluate health app
