Incremental Explanatory Value of Smartphone Characteristics and Usage Habits for Hand Strength and Manual Dexterity Beyond Demographic and Anthropometric Factors in Young Adults
Description
This dataset accompanies the cross-sectional study entitled “Incremental Explanatory Value of Smartphone Characteristics and Usage Habits for Hand Function Beyond Participant Characteristics.” The primary hypothesis was that smartphone device characteristics and usage habits would provide additional explanatory value for hand strength and manual dexterity beyond demographic and anthropometric participant characteristics. Secondary analyses examined whether individual smartphone-related factors were associated with specific hand-function outcomes. Data were collected from health services students aged 18–25 years at Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Türkiye, between May 15 and June 15, 2026. A total of 104 participants were assessed; five participants with incomplete data were excluded, resulting in a final analytical sample of 99 participants. The dataset includes demographic and anthropometric characteristics, including age, sex, dominant hand, regular exercise status, height, body weight, body mass index, and hand length. Smartphone-related variables include device weight, screen size, total duration of smartphone use, duration of use of the current smartphone, and average daily smartphone use over the preceding seven days. Smartphone weight and screen size were measured directly, while average daily smartphone use was obtained from the built-in Screen Time or Digital Wellbeing applications. Hand-function outcomes include dominant-hand grip strength, tip-to-tip pinch strength, lateral pinch strength, palmar pinch strength, and the four subtests of the Purdue Pegboard Test. The main analyses showed that smartphone device characteristics and usage habits did not provide a statistically significant incremental contribution to either hand strength or manual dexterity after adjustment for sex, age, body mass index, hand length, and regular exercise. In outcome-specific analyses, larger screen size showed a nominal positive association with lateral pinch strength, whereas longer total smartphone use duration showed a nominal negative association with Purdue Pegboard both-hands performance. However, neither association remained statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. Overall, the data indicate that the measured smartphone-related characteristics provide limited additional explanatory information about individual differences in hand function beyond participant characteristics. The dataset may be used for replication of the reported analyses, secondary analyses of associations between smartphone-related exposures and hand-function measures, methodological comparisons, or future pooled and meta-analytic investigations. Because the data were obtained using a cross-sectional design from a single-center sample of healthy young adults, associations should not be interpreted as causal, and generalization to other age groups or clinical populations should be made cautiously.