Health behavior tracking via mobile games: A case study among school-aged children

Abstract

Mobile devices are increasingly being used, in various ways, to collect data and are also increasingly related to individuals’ health behaviors. Because of the paucity of available data about the process of mobile data collection in tracking daily health behaviors among children, we designed this pilot study to determine the possibilities and the enhancing and inhibiting factors of a continuous data collection process using a mobile game. Twenty 10–12-year-old school children from two schools participated in the study. We asked the participants to play a game that recorded their health-related behaviors for seven consecutive days, answering 14–16 questions daily. The questions related to children’s eating habits, hygiene habits, hobbies and activities, networks, media use and devices, and sleep. In this article, we describe and discuss the process of data collection with its advances and challenges, including the planning and preparation of the survey according to its content and technicalities, training the pupils and their teacher to use the device and the health game, implementing the survey, and concluding the process. Additionally, we present viewpoints on educating children using collective health data.

Keywords

• mobile game
• mobile data collection
• health behavior tracking
• data collection process
• school-aged children
• health education