Development and Testing of a Relationship Safety Smartphone Application and Decision Aid for College Students

Background:Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious issue for college students, often resulting in negative health and mental health outcomes for those who experience it. The OneLove smartphone application (app) is designed for college-age women experiencing IPV and for friends of these women who would like to intervene. The app is innovative in that it incorporates a safety decision aid as its primary component. Decision aids are evidence-based tools most often used in medical settings to facilitate patient decision-making where the best course of action is unclear. Decision aids present available options, highlighting potential harms and benefits and allowing users to determine the factors most important to them. The OneLove app also provides users with access to health education around IPV, a safety risk assessment, and local and national resources. Given the prevalence of IPV reported by college-age women as well as young people’s reliance on technology and their decreased likelihood of seeking services, researchers developed this smartphone app as an innovative and developmentally appropriate intervention. In this study, college-age women were asked to review a prototype of the app and discuss its strengths and limitations. 

Methods: An interdisciplinary team of nurses and social workers developed content for a smartphone app addressing unsafe intimate relationships for (1) college-age women experiencing IPV and (2) their friends. Co-facilitated, 90-minute focus group interviews were conducted at 4 U.S. college campuses with IPV survivors and friends of survivors (n=26) to gather feedback about the app. Participants were between the ages of 18 – 25 years and recruited via Craig’s list, campus flyers, listservs, and word of mouth. Data were analyzed through thematic coding according to content validity, appropriateness, understandability and usability, and results informed the final development of the app.

Findings: Participants responded positively to the app and its utility as a private, autonomous way to learn about the signs and dangers of IPV as well as local and national resources. Across focus groups, participants expressed the need to receive information about private matters in a non-judgmental manner and reported that the app was able to meet this need (“You don’t have to worry about your phone’s judgments of you”). Participants described the intervention as easy to use but provided feedback on areas that could be improved. Resources provided by the app included tips for communicating with campus administrators and were considered helpful, though participants stressed the importance of providing web links within the app. Finally, participants were adamant that the app would serve as merely a starting point for intervention, to be followed by decision-making and subsequent action.

Discussion: For college-age women experiencing IPV, and friends who want to intervene, a safety decision aid delivered through a smartphone app appears to be developmentally appropriate, considering the technological expertise and help-seeking style of this population. Social workers can refer clients to this app as a resource and starting point for intervention. Results from this study informed the final development of the app, which is currently under evaluation in a multi-site randomized controlled trial.