The App Quality Evaluation tool (AQEL) allows nutrition professionals to quantitatively evaluate apps. This evaluation is helpful when deciding which apps might be most appropriate for your clients or program audiences.  This validated tool provides a method of scoring apps based on the following areas:

• Behavior Change Potential
• Support of Knowledge Acquisition
• Skill Development
• Function
• App Purpose

In addition to these 5 scores, 2 additional scores are calculated based on the nutrition needs and age of the target audience. This means you decide if you are evaluating the app for use by children, teens and/or adults.

For more information on the development, validation and reliability testing of AQEL, please refer to the following paper: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2017/10/e163

A review of Dietary Approaches to Support Hypertension apps using AQEL can be found here: https://www.jneb.org/article/S1499-4046(18)30089-7/fulltext

To access AQEL click here: App Quality Evaluation

If you are using AQEL to conduct research, please reference the following citation:

DiFilippo KN, Huang W, Chapman-Novakofski KM. A New Tool for Nutrition App Quality Evaluation (AQEL): Development, Validation, and Reliability Testing. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2017;5(10):e163 DOI: 10.2196/mhealth.7441