A Social Anxiety Mobile Intervention for College Students Attending Therapy: A Usability and Acceptability Study

Abstract

Social anxiety is significantly prevalent among college students and frequently leads to school dropout and academic underachievement. Since university counseling services are often overburdened, a mobile-based cognitive behavioral intervention was designed to support students attending therapy for social anxiety and therapists. Our main goals are to evaluate usability and acceptability of this technological system developed by a multidisciplinary team. Twenty students and three therapists participated in the usability studies. To evaluate usability we utilized a thinking aloud and question asking protocol, and the system usability scale (SUS) to assess usability and satisfaction. SPICA app demonstrated usability scores above average and the large majority of students agreed that the app was easy to use and that they would use it frequently. As for the therapist platform (database) preliminary results indicated that the database is useful but some alterations are still necessary. SPICA app demonstrated usability and acceptability among college students. A more rigorous study is needed to assess the therapist platform but preliminary results demonstrate acceptability.