Effectiveness of a Self-guided Mobile Application in Improving Wellbeing and Stress Coping

Excessive and chronic stress is a major public global health concern. Young adults are at particular risk to experience heightened stress because of life transitions. Short skills-focused self-guided applications (SGA) on mobile phones are a cost-effective and scalable way to equip users with better stress-coping skills, but many SGA stress-coping programmes are not evidence-based, existing research is flawed with methodological problems and is also predominantly conducted in Western countries. Questions also remain for whom SGAs work (moderators) and by which pathways (mediators). This study is a randomised-controlled trial (RCT) that evaluates the effectiveness of a recently developed mobile-phone SGA in improving stress coping in young adults. Hypothesis 1: The intervention group will report significantly lower stress symptoms at post-intervention and 1-month follow-up compared to the control group. Hypothesis 2: Coping self-efficacy will mediate the expected relationship between the use of the Stress-SGA and lower stress symptoms, i.e. people with higher coping self-efficacy will benefit more from the Stress-SGA than those with lower coping self-efficacy. Hypothesis 3: Psychological mindedness will moderate the expected relationship between the use of Stress-SGA and lower stress symptoms, i.e. people high in psychological mindedness will benefit more from the Stress-SGA than those with lower psychological mindedness.