Technology acceptability, acceptance and adoption - definitions and measurement

There is much interest in the development of personal health technologies, but many health technologies involve the capture and use of deeply personal and sensitive data, particularly in the space of mental health. For many years, technology researchers have examined concepts such as acceptability and acceptance, but we argue that these are even more important in the health domain, as the possible intrusiveness of technologies could lead to users refusing to even try a technology. During the design process of technology and in formative and summative evaluation, researchers may wish to explicitly address and measure acceptability and related constructs, as well as at different points in the user experience (before use, on first use, after some period of usage). While a range of definitions have been offered independently, many researchers conflate related terms and may benefit both from a coherent set of definitions, and associated approaches to measurement. In this paper, we describe a systematic review of the usage of acceptance, acceptability, and adoption within the mobile health literature, and present a preliminary analysis of the most recent literature