Behavior-change techniques are not well represented in the marketing materials for top-rated physical-activity apps, according to a team of Penn State researchers. They also found that two types of physical-activity apps are available on the market — those that focus on educating users on how to perform different exercises and those that focus on supporting users’ motivation for physical activity. “The app marketplace is largely unregulated and users make decisions based on developers’ descriptions of apps,” said David Conroy, professor of kinesiology. “Our results suggest that developers have not incorporated many behavior-change techniques to date, and there may be opportunities to integrate behavioral science to make apps that are more effective for helping people who seek to change their behavior and become more active.” The researchers identified the top-ranked health and fitness apps as of Aug. 28, 2013, on the two major online marketplaces — Apple iTunes and Google Play. Specifically, they examined apps from the top 50 paid and top 50 free lists in the “health and fitness” category for each operating system, resulting in four lists totaling 200 apps. Next, they located descriptions of each app online, reviewed the descriptions and had them coded by two trained coders using the
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