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JMIR Formative Research

Process evaluations, early results, and feasibility/pilot studies of digital and non-digital interventions

Editor-in-Chief:

Amaryllis Mavragani, PhD, Scientific Editor at JMIR Publications, Canada


Impact Factor 2.4 More information about Impact Factor CiteScore 4.2 More information about CiteScore

JMIR Formative Research publishes peer-reviewed, openly accessible papers containing results from process evaluations, feasibility/pilot studies and other kinds of formative research and preliminary results. While the original focus was on the design of medical- and health-related research and technology innovations, JMIR Formative Research publishes studies from all areas of medical and health research.

Formative research is research that occurs before a program is designed and implemented, or while a program is being conducted. Formative research can help

  • define and understand populations in need of an intervention or public health program
  • create programs that are specific to the needs of those populations
  • ensure programs are acceptable and feasible to users before launching
  • improve the relationship between users and agencies/research groups
  • demonstrate the feasibility, use, satisfaction with, or problems with a program before large-scale summative evaluation (looking at health outcomes)

Many funding agencies will expect some sort of pilot/feasibility/process evaluation before funding a larger study such as a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).

Formative research should be an integral part of developing or adapting programs and should be used while the program is ongoing to help refine and improve program activities. Thus, formative evaluation can and should also occur in the form of a process evaluation alongside a summative evaluation such as an RCT.

JMIR Formative Research fills an important gap in the academic journals landscape, as it publishes sound and peer-reviewed formative research that is critical for investigators to apply for further funding, but that is usually not published in outcomes-focused medical journals aiming for impact and generalizability.

Summative evaluations of programs and apps/software that have undergone a thorough formative evaluation before launch have a better chance to be published in high-impact flagship journals; thus, we encourage authors to submit - as a first step - their formative evaluations in JMIR Formative Research (and their evaluation protocols to JMIR Research Protocols). 

JMIR Formative Research is indexed in MEDLINEPubMed, PubMed CentralDOAJ, Scopus, Sherpa/Romeo, EBSCO/EBSCO Essentials, and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

JMIR Formative Research received a 2025 Impact Factor of 2.4, ranking Q2 in Health Care Sciences & Services (97/194).

JMIR Formative Research received a Scopus CiteScore of 4.2 (2025), placing it in the 68th percentile (149/466) as a second quartile (Q2) journal in the field of Medicine, and in the 52nd percentile (81/168) as a second quartile (Q2) journal in the field of Health Informatics. 


Recent Articles

Woman checks fitness app on phone as man runs on park path.
Development and Evaluation of Research Methods, Instruments and Tools

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective counseling approach for promoting health behavior change, but its scalability is constrained by the need for highly trained human counselors. Large language models (LLMs) may provide a scalable way to support MI counseling, but evidence remains limited, especially for Chinese MI resources and evaluations based on standardized MI fidelity frameworks.

Doctor using laptop showing echocardiogram of prolapsed valve in left ventricle
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is a common valvulopathy associated, in a minority of cases, with heart failure, severe mitral regurgitation (MR), and sudden arrhythmic death. Digital tools hold promise for faster and more efficient recruitment of study participants into a large-scale MVP Registry.

Woman in face mask and striped shirt clenches fist, showing determination.
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Predictive models increasingly support clinical decision-making, although imbalanced outcome distributions are common in health care datasets and can distort performance evaluation. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) remains the most frequently reported metric, despite its limited ability to reflect clinically meaningful performance under class imbalance.

Tablet displaying study design: Testing Phase with fixation trials and new images.
Development and Evaluation of Research Methods, Instruments and Tools

When confronted with ambiguous stimuli, the ability to utilize contextual information is crucial for survival. Context processing involves the ability to discriminate new information from previously encountered information and to recognize something as previously encountered, even briefly or partially. Deficits in context processing are a key feature across a number of psychiatric conditions. Existing tasks only examine the discrimination and recognition of cues as opposed to contextual information. Thus, new tasks using complex scenes are urgently needed.

Elderly Asian couple happily taking a selfie on a smartphone.
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Population aging has become a critical global challenge, with South Korea entering a super-aged society and facing rapidly increasing health care demands. In response, digital health care devices have emerged as promising tools for supporting personalized health management and improving health care accessibility among older adults. However, despite their potential, adoption rates among older adults remain relatively low. Prior research based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has largely relied on variable-centered approaches, overlooking substantial heterogeneity in acceptance patterns among older adults. A person-centered segmentation approach is therefore needed to identify diverse acceptance profiles. Few studies have integrated the augmented TAM with K-means clustering to identify acceptance-based segments in this population.

Man in mask waits in clinic lobby with patients and medical staff.
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Enterovirus infections cause substantial pediatric morbidity worldwide, with severe cases requiring hospitalization. Accurate forecasting of hospitalization burden supports proactive resource allocation and clinical preparedness. During the postpandemic period (2023‐2024), Taiwan experienced a resurgence of enterovirus activity following COVID-19–related suppression, although at levels below prepandemic baselines, creating unique operational forecasting challenges.

Four people sitting on concrete wall using smartphones
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) participation among Chinese college students remains insufficient despite growing public health concerns regarding sedentary lifestyles and obesity. Social media platforms have increasingly become important channels for delivering social support related to physical activity (PA); however, different dimensions of social support on social media may exert distinct psychological influences on exercise intentions.

Elderly woman with walker smiling with a nurse in blue scrubs
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Community-based mobile health (mHealth) services are increasingly used to support chronic disease management in underserved rural populations facing workforce shortages, geographic isolation, and rapid aging. South Korea entered a super-aged society in December 2024, intensifying pressures in rural regions where multiple mHealth programs are embedded within primary care and public health systems. However, evidence on sustained use in real-world settings remains limited.

Person in PPE examining COVID-19 test tube, hands wearing blue gloves
Early Results from COVID-19 Studies

Long COVID is a clinical condition that significantly influences quality of life, productivity, and morbidity in the individuals affected. Much of the research to date has examined medical comorbidities and their associations with long COVID, but there remains a substantial need to understand the social and behavioral factors associated with long COVID.

Elderly couple on a telehealth appointment with a doctor on a tablet.
Formative Evaluation of Digital Health Interventions

Use of in-home video telehealth rapidly expanded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including at Veterans Affairs (VA), a forerunner in telehealth. Despite this uptick, differences in use by patient age and rurality created a digital divide that persists to this day. While clinicians frequently cite patients’ older age and lack of technical skills as barriers to in-home video telehealth, it remains unclear how clinicians decide whether to offer video visits to patients and to what extent these beliefs may hinder offering video visits to older adults. Gathering perspectives from clinician users of in-home video telehealth may illuminate opportunities to ensure continued access to care through solutions such as telehealth.

Preprints Open for Peer Review

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