Predicting Mobile Mental Telehealth Usability Based on Individual Differences

Due to the increased need for the delivery of successful mental health interventions in special populations (i.e., military personnel, rural populations, aging populations, etc.), mobile mental telehealth applications have been developed to supplement patient-practitioner interaction. While there is a great deal of work on both patient and practitioner satisfaction with mobile mental telehealth devices, little is known about the influence of individual differences on user perceptions of usability and usefulness. The present study seeks to better predict the usability of mobile mental telehealth applications by drawing from the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis & Venkatesh, 1996; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; Venkatesh, 2000) and self-determination theory literature (Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994; Ryan & Deci, 2001; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Eighty undergraduate students participated in a usability study examining the perceived ease of use of two free-to-download mobile mental telehealth applications. In this experiment, participants completed a series of surveys related to attitudes towards mental telehealth applications, motivation to use mental telehealth technology, and a brief demographic survey after interacting with the mental telehealth applications. A stepwise regression with an adjusted R² value of .41 indicated that a little less than half of the variability in perceived mental telehealth application usability is predicted by user competence, user attitudes toward telehealth technology, and user goals for the system. The implications of these findings will be discussed further, as well as the limitations of this study.