Developing a rating tool for APP SAfety (APPSAFE)

Project Information

APPSAFE

Grant agreement ID: 101069354

DOI

10.3030/101069354

Project closed

EC signature date 17 October 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

TILBURG UNIVERSITY- UNIVERSITEIT VAN TILBURG
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - APPSAFE (Developing a rating tool for APP SAfety (APPSAFE))

Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Mental health and wellbeing apps, such as mood trackers, mindfulness apps, or apps to keep track of symptoms and medication use, are frequently used by people in the general population as well as by people receiving mental health care, in order to manage their mental health and wellbeing. The Covid-19 pandemic has given further impetus to the use of such apps in our daily lives. There are many apps available for personal use, with a recent estimate suggesting that there are more than 10,000 mental health apps currently available. These apps have been developed by a range of different (private) actors, and for a wide variety of purposes.
This variety means that, as of yet, not enough research has been done to find out more about people’s experiences with mental health and wellbeing apps. In this research, we have conducted interviews with users of mental health and wellbeing apps, in order to see: a) how users experience the apps and the purpose these apps have in their lives; b) how users select which apps they will use and why; and c) what their experiences are of safety in relation to these mental health and wellbeing apps.We have used these interviews to build a prototype automatic rating tool (in the form of a dashboard) for mental health and wellbeing apps, in which experiences of people with apps are a central element for how apps are rated (https://jesperstromblad.github.io/appsafe-dashboard/). The dashboard will be updated through 2024 based on the findings from the ethographic research.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project researchers conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with users (and some non-users) of mental health and wellbeing apps. After receiving ethics clearance, we recruited respondents in the Netherlands and conducted first interviews, then a series of focus groups to further explore our findings. We interviewed users of different kinds of apps, from general wellbeing apps to ones targeted at particular mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety. Our starting point was to investigate what makes people feel safe in relation to mental health generally. When is this a safe space, and when might their subjective safety be threatened? We then zoomed in on safety in relation to apps specifically, comparing what made people feel safe using apps to what app stores ask developers to tell users about those apps. Our main finding from this process was that data security, which is what app stores index for users, is one component of safety overall, but not the most important. Instead people wish to understand what is being done with their data by third parties, and what implications that has for them in the future.
We built a dashboard (https://jesperstromblad.github.io/appsafe-dashboard/) to show what information app stores were making available about apps, and to explain to users how much, and what kind of, information was available. The final stage of the project is to conduct a comparison between the dashboard and the findings of the ethnography, in order to contribute to app governance in the form of standardisation and regulation. This will be done over the coming year, post-project, and will be completed by summer 2025.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Overview of results:
The proof-of-concept was successful in that we have been able to demonstrate that the information provided by app stores does not map onto the needs and perceptions of users regarding safety. This was the main promise of the project, and has been accomplished.
In the following stage, we will:
a) demonstrate our findings to regulators, digital privacy/safety standardisation bodies, and the research community, using the proof-of-concept dashboard developed by the project;
b) publish on the regulatory implications of our findings in academic journals;
c) update the dashboard and publicise it to different communities (users, regulators and standards bodies).