Assessment of Environmental, Sociocultural, and Physiological Influences on Women’s Toileting Decisions and Behaviors Using “Where I Go”: Pilot Study of a Mobile App
Abstract BackgroundLittle is known about women’s decisions around toileting for urination and how those decisions influence moment-to-moment behaviors to manage bladder needs. The new smartphone app “Where I Go” captures such nuanced and granular data in real-world environment...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
JMIR Publications
2025-02-01
|
| Series: | JMIR mHealth and uHealth |
| Online Access: | https://mhealth.jmir.org/2025/1/e56533 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Abstract
BackgroundLittle is known about women’s decisions around toileting for urination and how those decisions influence moment-to-moment behaviors to manage bladder needs. The new smartphone app “Where I Go” captures such nuanced and granular data in real-world environments.
ObjectiveThis study aims to describe participant engagement with “Where I Go”, variation in novel parameters collected, and readiness for the data collection tool’s use in population-based studies.
Methods“Where I Go” has three components: (1) real-time data, (2) short look-back periods (3‐4 h), and (3) event location (GPS recorded at each interaction). The sample size was 44 women. Recording of real-time toileting events and responding to look-back questions was measured over 2 days of data collection. The participant’s self-entered location descriptions and the automatic GPS recordings were compared.
ResultsA total of 44 women with an average age of 44 (range 21-85) years interacted with the app. Real-time reporting of at least 1 toileting event per day was high (38/44, 86%, on day 1 and 40/44, 91%, on day 2) with a median of 5 (IQR 3-7 on day 1 and IQR 3-8 on day 2) toileting events recorded each day. Toileting most commonly occurred at home (85/140, 61%, on day 1 and 129/171, 75%, on day 2) due to a need to go (114/140, 66%, on day 1 and 153/171, 74%, on day 2). The most common reasons for delaying toileting were “work duties” (33/140, 21%, on day 1 and 21/171, 11%, on day 2) and “errands or traveling” (19/140, 12%, on day 1 and 19/171, 10%, on day 2). Response to at least 1 look-back notification was similarly high (41/44, 93%, on day 1 and 42/44, 95%, on day 2), with number of responses higher on average on day 2 compared with day 1 (mean on day 1=3.2, 95% CI 3.0-3.5; mean on day 2=4.3, 95% CI 3.9-4.7; Prrrr
Conclusions“Where I Go” has potential to increase the understanding of factors that affect women’s toileting decisions and long-term bladder health. We anticipate its use as a data collection tool in population-based studies. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2291-5222 |