BACKGROUND
The dramatic growth of digital health applications has posed an urgent demand for rigorous usability assessment tools. While the Health Information Technology Usability Evaluation Scale (Health-ITUES) has been increasingly utilized as a validated tool to evaluate the usability of digital health applications, there is no validated Chinese version available.
OBJECTIVE
To translate and culturally adapt the Health-ITUES into Chinese, revise its customized parts to cater to both service consumers and professional care providers, and evaluate its reliability and validity in the Chinese context.
METHODS
Following the Guideline for the Process of Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Self-Report Measures, the original Health-ITUES was translated and cross-culturally adapted into the Chinese version and then customized to the Care Receiver Version (Health-ITUES-R) and Professional Care Provider Version (Health-ITUES-P) based on the overall objectives and functional components of the SMART application. Older individuals and nurses were subsequently included in the validation test from December 2020 to February 2021. Content validity, internal consistency reliability, construct validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion validity were used to evaluate the psychometric attributes of the Health-ITUES-R and Health-ITUES-P.
RESULTS
A Chinese version of the Health-ITUES comprising 20 items across 4 dimensions was formulated. Based on this, the Health-ITUES-R and Health-ITUES-P were customized. Both the Health-ITUES-R and Health-ITUES-P demonstrated satisfactory content validity, internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Confirmatory factor analysis results indicated a four-dimension model consistent with the original scale structure and exhibited acceptable model fit. Furthermore, Pearson's correlation coefficients between the Health-ITUES-R and reflected a high between the Health-ITUES-R and Patient Acceptance Questionnaire for Mobile Health Application reflected a high criterion validity.
CONCLUSIONS
The Chinese version of the Health-ITUES is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate the usability of digital health applications for both care receivers and professional care providers.
CLINICALTRIAL
Not Applicable
