Digital health technologies and self-efficacy in Parkinson's: a scoping review

Objective: Prior research has identified that people with Parkinson's reporting lower levels of self-efficacy exhibit worsening motor and non-motor symptomology, reduced quality of life, and self-management. Our key objective was to conduct a scoping review examining the impact of digital health technologies on self-efficacy in people with Parkinson's.

Design: A scoping review using Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework was undertaken.

Data sources: MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, and Google Scholar principally for grey literature were searched from 1 January 2008 to the 24th of July 2024.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies: Primary studies which incorporated digital health technologies, measured self-efficacy and had a sample population of people with Parkinson's were searched.

Data extraction and synthesis: Following identification of potentially eligible records, two independent reviewers undertook title and abstract screening, followed by full-text screening. Data was extracted using our earlier published data extraction sheet which incorporated the Practical Reviews in Self-Management Support (PRISMS) taxonomy, and the template for intervention description and replication (TIDieR) checklist. Data was extracted from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and synthesised by describing themes, demographic data and numerical data.

Results: From 33 165 unique records following screening and independent review by two reviewers, 11 eligible records were found. Of these five elevated self-efficacy to a statistically significant level, five did not and one lowered self-efficacy. Of the studies which raised self-efficacy to a statistically significant level, all adopted a multimodal approach with a variety of devices. Thematically, these devices were focused on physical activity, falls/falls prevention, or both. The level of heterogeneity precluded comparisons between studies.

Conclusions: This scoping review identified significant knowledge and evidence gaps in the literature, and the limited number of eligible studies make these findings not generalisable. Future self-management research might benefit from also considering self-efficacy.