scholarly journals Research Methods for Studying Daily Life

Psychology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Arredondo ◽  
Gloria Luong
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Reconstruction Methods ◽  
Retrospective Recall ◽  
Psychological Experiences ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Study Designs

Methods for studying daily life have blossomed since the 1980s. Although these methods have been around for years, their popularity is always increasing as technological innovations have made the use of these methods easier and more reliable to employ. Methods for studying daily life typically include taking repeated real-time assessments of individual behaviors, physiology, and/or psychological experiences, over the course of an individual’s everyday life. These methods include experience sampling methodology (ESM), ecological momentary assessments (EMA), ambulatory assessments (AA), and daily diary or day reconstruction methods. All of these methods include repeated or detailed assessments of daily- life experiences but vary in terms of the frequency of assessments, technological tools to administer assessments, and timing of assessments (e.g., real time assessments versus retrospective recall). Given that these methods are intended to capture observations of psychological experiences in daily life, they require careful consideration of study design, measurements, and assessment tools. This article will provide a general overview of daily-life methods, including discussions about the different study designs and sampling methods. Furthermore, it will describe the advantages and limitations of using these methods along with examples of empirical studies that illustrate the usefulness of these techniques. It will also provide information on important considerations for sampling and measuring experiences in daily life and provide examples of the technology available for daily-life assessments.

scholarly journals Development and Acceptability of a Method to Investigate Prescription Drug Misuse in Daily Life: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Papp ◽  
Shari M. Blumenstock ◽  
Chrystyna D Kouros
Keyword(s):  
Prescription Drug ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Risk Group ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Time Factors ◽  
Drug Misuse ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Prescription Drug Misuse ◽  
Ecological Momentary

Background: Prescription drug misuse and abuse is an established public health challenge, and young adults are particularly affected. There is a striking lack of real-time, naturalistic data collection assessing intentions to misuse and other precipitating factors at the time of actual misuse, leaving unknown under what conditions individuals are most likely to misuse prescription medications. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) applications and protocols designed to capture this information would accelerate and expand the knowledge base and could directly contribute to prevention and treatment efforts.Objective: The objectives in the current study were to (1) describe the development and administration of a mobile application and EMA protocol designed to collect real-time factors associated with college students’ prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life; (2) present completion rates, compliance, acceptability, and reactivity associated with the EMA protocol for participants who endorsed recent prescription drug misuse at screening (n = 300; i.e., risk group) and those who did not (n = 55; i.e., non-risk group); and (3) establish initial construct validity by linking the reports of misuse behavior in daily life collected via the EMA app to prescription drug misuse reported on a standard survey.Methods: An EMA data collection app and protocol were designed specifically to capture hypothesized contextual factors along with prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life. Using the protocol, young-adult college students (N = 352) completed signal- and event-contingent reports over a 28-day period. When intention to misuse a prescription drug was endorsed, a brief follow-up prompt was sent 15 minutes later to collect participants’ indications of whether or not misuse had occurred.Results: Risk-group participants were significantly more likely than non-risk counterparts to endorse any prescription drug misuse intentions in daily life, to complete one or more follow-up report, and to endorse any prescription drug misuse behavior in daily life on the follow-ups (P-values < .001). Overall, participants demonstrated consistent engagement with the EMA procedures and returned an average of 74.5 reports (SD = 23.82, range 10-122). Participants in risk and non-risk groups did not differ in the number of reports they completed, the number of their reporting days, or their average completion rates (P-values > .10). Results indicated some evidence of reactivity to the momentary reporting procedure. Participants reported uniformly positive experiences and remained highly engaged throughout the reporting protocol and broader study.Conclusions: The novel EMA app and protocol provide an effective way to assess real-time factors associated with prescription drug misuse intentions and behavior in daily life. The resulting investigations offer the potential to provide highly translatable information for research and prevention efforts.

scholarly journals Development and Acceptability of a Method to Investigate Prescription Drug Misuse in Daily Life: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

10.2196/21676 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. e21676
Author(s):  
Lauren M Papp ◽  
Alexandra Barringer ◽  
Shari M Blumenstock ◽  
Pamela Gu ◽  
Madison Blaydes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prescription Drug ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Time Factors ◽  
Drug Misuse ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Prescription Drug Misuse ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Ecological Momentary

Background Prescription drug misuse and abuse is an established public health challenge, and young adults are particularly affected. There is a striking lack of real-time, naturalistic data collection assessing intentions to misuse and other precipitating factors at the time of actual misuse, leaving the conditions under which individuals are most likely to misuse prescription medications unknown. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) apps and protocols designed to capture this information would accelerate and expand the knowledge base and could directly contribute to prevention and treatment efforts. Objective The objectives of this study are to describe the development and administration of a mobile app and the EMA protocol designed to collect real-time factors associated with college students’ prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life; present completion rates, compliance, acceptability, and reactivity associated with the EMA protocol for participants who endorsed recent prescription drug misuse at screening (ie, risk group; n=300) and those who did not (ie, nonrisk group; n=55); and establish initial construct validity by linking the reports of misuse behaviors in daily life collected via the EMA app to prescription drug misuse reported on a standard survey. Methods An EMA data collection app and protocol were designed specifically to capture hypothesized contextual factors along with prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life. Using this protocol, young adult college students (N=352) completed signal- and event-contingent reports over a 28-day period. When the intention to misuse a prescription drug was endorsed, a brief follow-up prompt was sent 15 min later to collect participants’ indications of whether or not misuse had occurred. Results Risk-group participants were significantly more likely than nonrisk counterparts to endorse any prescription drug misuse intentions in daily life (P<.001), to complete one or more follow-up reports (P<.001), and to endorse any prescription drug misuse behavior in daily life on the follow-ups (P<.001). Overall, participants demonstrated consistent engagement with the EMA procedures and returned an average of 74.5 (SD 23.82; range 10-122) reports. Participants in the risk and nonrisk groups did not differ in the number of reports they completed (P=.12), the number of their reporting days (P=.32), or their average completion rates (P=.14). The results indicated some evidence of reactivity to the momentary reporting procedure. Participants reported uniformly positive experiences and remained highly engaged throughout the reporting protocol and broader study. Conclusions The novel EMA app and protocol provide an effective way to assess real-time factors associated with prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life. The resulting investigations offer the potential to provide highly translatable information for research and prevention efforts.

scholarly journals Technological Ecological Momentary Assessment Tools to Study Type 1 Diabetes in Youth: Viewpoint of Methodologies

JMIR Diabetes ◽  
10.2196/27027 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. e27027
Author(s):  
Mary Katherine Ray ◽  
Alana McMichael ◽  
Maria Rivera-Santana ◽  
Jacob Noel ◽  
Tamara Hershey
Keyword(s):  
Type 1 Diabetes ◽  
Ecological Momentary Assessment ◽  
Diabetes Care ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Blood Pressure Monitoring ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Personal Digital Assistants ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Momentary Assessment

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common chronic childhood diseases, and its prevalence is rapidly increasing. The management of glucose in T1D is challenging, as youth must consider a myriad of factors when making diabetes care decisions. This task often leads to significant hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and glucose variability throughout the day, which have been associated with short- and long-term medical complications. At present, most of what is known about each of these complications and the health behaviors that may lead to them have been uncovered in the clinical setting or in laboratory-based research. However, the tools often used in these settings are limited in their ability to capture the dynamic behaviors, feelings, and physiological changes associated with T1D that fluctuate from moment to moment throughout the day. A better understanding of T1D in daily life could potentially aid in the development of interventions to improve diabetes care and mitigate the negative medical consequences associated with it. Therefore, there is a need to measure repeated, real-time, and real-world features of this disease in youth. This approach is known as ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and it has considerable advantages to in-lab research. Thus, this viewpoint aims to describe EMA tools that have been used to collect data in the daily lives of youth with T1D and discuss studies that explored the nuances of T1D in daily life using these methods. This viewpoint focuses on the following EMA methods: continuous glucose monitoring, actigraphy, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, personal digital assistants, smartphones, and phone-based systems. The viewpoint also discusses the benefits of using EMA methods to collect important data that might not otherwise be collected in the laboratory and the limitations of each tool, future directions of the field, and possible clinical implications for their use.

scholarly journals Development and Acceptability of a Method to Investigate Prescription Drug Misuse in Daily Life: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren M Papp ◽  
Alexandra Barringer ◽  
Shari M Blumenstock ◽  
Pamela Gu ◽  
Madison Blaydes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prescription Drug ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Time Factors ◽  
Drug Misuse ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Prescription Drug Misuse ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Ecological Momentary

BACKGROUND Prescription drug misuse and abuse is an established public health challenge, and young adults are particularly affected. There is a striking lack of real-time, naturalistic data collection assessing intentions to misuse and other precipitating factors at the time of actual misuse, leaving the conditions under which individuals are most likely to misuse prescription medications unknown. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) apps and protocols designed to capture this information would accelerate and expand the knowledge base and could directly contribute to prevention and treatment efforts. OBJECTIVE The objectives of this study are to describe the development and administration of a mobile app and the EMA protocol designed to collect real-time factors associated with college students’ prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life; present completion rates, compliance, acceptability, and reactivity associated with the EMA protocol for participants who endorsed recent prescription drug misuse at screening (ie, risk group; n=300) and those who did not (ie, nonrisk group; n=55); and establish initial construct validity by linking the reports of misuse behaviors in daily life collected via the EMA app to prescription drug misuse reported on a standard survey. METHODS An EMA data collection app and protocol were designed specifically to capture hypothesized contextual factors along with prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life. Using this protocol, young adult college students (N=352) completed signal- and event-contingent reports over a 28-day period. When the intention to misuse a prescription drug was endorsed, a brief follow-up prompt was sent 15 min later to collect participants’ indications of whether or not misuse had occurred. RESULTS Risk-group participants were significantly more likely than nonrisk counterparts to endorse any prescription drug misuse intentions in daily life (<i>P</i>&lt;.001), to complete one or more follow-up reports (<i>P</i>&lt;.001), and to endorse any prescription drug misuse behavior in daily life on the follow-ups (<i>P</i>&lt;.001). Overall, participants demonstrated consistent engagement with the EMA procedures and returned an average of 74.5 (SD 23.82; range 10-122) reports. Participants in the risk and nonrisk groups did not differ in the number of reports they completed (<i>P</i>=.12), the number of their reporting days (<i>P</i>=.32), or their average completion rates (<i>P</i>=.14). The results indicated some evidence of reactivity to the momentary reporting procedure. Participants reported uniformly positive experiences and remained highly engaged throughout the reporting protocol and broader study. CONCLUSIONS The novel EMA app and protocol provide an effective way to assess real-time factors associated with prescription drug misuse intentions and behaviors in daily life. The resulting investigations offer the potential to provide highly translatable information for research and prevention efforts.

scholarly journals Technological Ecological Momentary Assessment Tools to Study Type 1 Diabetes in Youth: Viewpoint of Methodologies (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Katherine Ray ◽  
Alana McMichael ◽  
Maria Rivera-Santana ◽  
Jacob Noel ◽  
Tamara Hershey
Keyword(s):  
Type 1 Diabetes ◽  
Ecological Momentary Assessment ◽  
Diabetes Care ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Blood Pressure Monitoring ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Personal Digital Assistants ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Momentary Assessment

UNSTRUCTURED Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common chronic childhood diseases, and its prevalence is rapidly increasing. The management of glucose in T1D is challenging, as youth must consider a myriad of factors when making diabetes care decisions. This task often leads to significant hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and glucose variability throughout the day, which have been associated with short- and long-term medical complications. At present, most of what is known about each of these complications and the health behaviors that may lead to them have been uncovered in the clinical setting or in laboratory-based research. However, the tools often used in these settings are limited in their ability to capture the dynamic behaviors, feelings, and physiological changes associated with T1D that fluctuate from moment to moment throughout the day. A better understanding of T1D in daily life could potentially aid in the development of interventions to improve diabetes care and mitigate the negative medical consequences associated with it. Therefore, there is a need to measure repeated, real-time, and real-world features of this disease in youth. This approach is known as ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and it has considerable advantages to in-lab research. Thus, this viewpoint aims to describe EMA tools that have been used to collect data in the daily lives of youth with T1D and discuss studies that explored the nuances of T1D in daily life using these methods. This viewpoint focuses on the following EMA methods: continuous glucose monitoring, actigraphy, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, personal digital assistants, smartphones, and phone-based systems. The viewpoint also discusses the benefits of using EMA methods to collect important data that might not otherwise be collected in the laboratory and the limitations of each tool, future directions of the field, and possible clinical implications for their use.

Beliefs about emotion shift dynamically alongside momentary affect

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Veilleux ◽  
Elise Warner ◽  
Danielle Baker ◽  
Kaitlyn Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Personality Pathology ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Assessment Study ◽  
Directed Action ◽  
Emotion Beliefs ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Momentary Assessment

This study examined if beliefs about emotion change across emotional contexts in daily life, and investigated whether people with prominent features of borderline personality pathology experience greater shifts in emotion beliefs during emotional states compared to people without borderline features. Undergraduate participants with (n = 49) and without borderline features (n = 50) completed a one week ecological momentary assessment study where 7x/day they provided ratings of affect, nine different beliefs about emotion and indicators of momentary self-efficacy. Results indicated a significant between-person element to emotion beliefs, supporting the notion of beliefs as relatively schematic. In addition, people with borderline features generally experienced greater instability of beliefs over time compared to people without borderline features. In addition, most of the beliefs about emotion shifted with either positive or negative affect. For many of the emotion beliefs, the relationships between affect and belief were moderated by borderline group. Finally, momentary beliefs about emotion also predicted momentary self-efficacy for tolerating distress and exerting willpower. Taken together, results confirm that beliefs about emotion can fluctuate in daily life and that there are implications for emotion beliefs for people who struggle with emotion regulation and impulsivity (i.e., people with features of borderline personality) as well as for self-efficacy in tolerating emotion and engaging in goal-directed action.

Alcohol use in daily life: Examining the role of trait and state impulsivity facets

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A Griffin ◽  
Timothy J Trull
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Sensation Seeking ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Drinking Behavior ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Trait Level ◽  
Trait Impulsivity ◽  
Drinking Behaviors ◽  
Ecological Momentary

Objectives: Using Ecological Momentary Assessment methods (EMA) we aimed to investigate the influence of trait and state (momentary) impulsivity on alcohol use behaviors in daily life. Facets of the UPPS trait model of impulsivity (Whiteside and Lynam, 2001) have been found to differentially relate to alcohol-related outcomes and behaviors in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. The present work expands on this by assessing UPPS facets in daily life and examining the contributions of trait and state impulsivity facets to daily life drinking behavior. Methods: 49 participants were prompted at least six times per day for 21 days. A total of 4,548 collected EMA reports were included in analyses. Multi-level models were computed predicting daily life alcohol use behaviors from state and trait impulsivity facets and relevant covariates. Results: Individual facets of momentary impulsivity differentially related to alcohol outcomes, such that (lack of) premeditation and, to a lesser extent, sensation seeking showed unique patterns of association with drinking and drinking quantity. Only trait levels of (lack of) premeditation were related to drinking behavior in daily life; no other trait UPPS scale significantly related to alcohol use. Conclusions: These results highlight state difficulties with premeditation as particularly relevant to drinking behavior in daily life. Our results also support the incremental validity of state impulsivity facets over trait level measures in relation to drinking behavior in daily life. These findings offer important insight into the phenomenology of daily-life alcohol use and highlight possible avenues for intervention and prevention efforts. Public Health Statement: Momentary fluctuations in premeditation predict alcohol use in daily life. Treatments targeting planning or forethought in relation to alcohol use may interrupt this process contributing to daily life drinking behaviors.

The Impact of Coping Strategies on Situational Coping in Daily Life: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study with the mHealth application TrackYourStress (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa O'Rourke ◽  
Carsten Vogel ◽  
Dennis John ◽  
Rüdiger Pryss ◽  
Johannes Schobel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Stress Coping ◽  
Positive Thinking ◽  
Active Stress ◽  
Situational Coping ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Positive Effect

BACKGROUND It is necessary to cope with situations in daily life to prevent stress-related health consequences. However, coping strategies might differ in their impact on dealing with stressful situations in daily life. Moreover, the effect of coping strategies on situational coping might differ between women and men. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of coping strategies on situational coping in everyday life situations and to investigate gender differences. METHODS An ecological momentary assessment study with the mobile health app TrackYourStress (TYS) was conducted with 113 participants. Coping strategies were measured at baseline with the coping scales Positive Thinking, Active Stress Coping, Social Support, Support in Faith, and Alcohol and Cigarette Consumption of the Stress and Coping Inventory (SCI). Situational coping was assessed by the question “How well can you cope with your momentary stress-level” (slider 0-100) in daily life over four weeks. Multilevel models were conducted to test the effects of the coping strategies on situational coping. Additionally, gender differences were evaluated. RESULTS Positive Thinking (P=.03) and Active Stress Coping (P=.04) had significant positive impacts on situational coping in the total sample. For women, only Social Support had a significant positive effect on situational coping (P=.046). For men, only Active Stress Coping had a significant positive effect on situational coping (P=.001). Women had higher scores on the SCI scale Social Support than men (P=.007). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that different coping strategies could be more effective in daily life for women than for men, which should be considered in the development of interventions aimed at reducing stress consequences through coping. Interventions taking gender into consideration might lead to better coping-outcomes than generalized interventions.

Assessing Medical Evidence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Stegenga
Keyword(s):  
Quality Assessment ◽  
Randomized Trials ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Allocation Concealment ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Medical Evidence ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
First Order ◽  
First Order Methods

Medical scientists employ ‘quality assessment tools’ to assess evidence from medical research, especially from randomized trials. These tools are designed to take into account methodological details of studies, including randomization, subject allocation concealment, and other features of studies deemed relevant to minimizing bias. There are dozens of such tools available. They differ widely from each other, and empirical studies show that they have low inter-rater reliability and low inter-tool reliability. This is an instance of a more general problem called here the underdetermination of evidential significance. Disagreements about the quality of evidence can be due to different—but in principle equally good—weightings of the methodological features that constitute quality assessment tools. Thus, the malleability of empirical research in medicine is deep: in addition to the malleability of first-order empirical methods, such as randomized trials, there is malleability in the tools used to evaluate first-order methods.

Why Ecological Momentary Assessment Surveys Go Incomplete?: When It Happens and How It Impacts Data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Hsiang Wu ◽  
Jingjing Xu ◽  
Elizabeth Stangl ◽  
Shareka Pentony ◽  
Dhruv Vyas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Data Logging ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Real Time Data ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Self Report Data ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Momentary Assessment

Abstract Background Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) often requires respondents to complete surveys in the moment to report real-time experiences. Because EMA may seem disruptive or intrusive, respondents may not complete surveys as directed in certain circumstances. Purpose This article aims to determine the effect of environmental characteristics on the likelihood of instances where respondents do not complete EMA surveys (referred to as survey incompletion), and to estimate the impact of survey incompletion on EMA self-report data. Research Design An observational study. Study Sample Ten adults hearing aid (HA) users. Data Collection and Analysis Experienced, bilateral HA users were recruited and fit with study HAs. The study HAs were equipped with real-time data loggers, an algorithm that logged the data generated by HAs (e.g., overall sound level, environment classification, and feature status including microphone mode and amount of gain reduction). The study HAs were also connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone app, which collected the real-time data logging data as well as presented the participants with EMA surveys about their listening environments and experiences. The participants were sent out to wear the HAs and complete surveys for 1 week. Real-time data logging was triggered when participants completed surveys and when participants ignored or snoozed surveys. Data logging data were used to estimate the effect of environmental characteristics on the likelihood of survey incompletion, and to predict participants' responses to survey questions in the instances of survey incompletion. Results Across the 10 participants, 715 surveys were completed and survey incompletion occurred 228 times. Mixed effects logistic regression models indicated that survey incompletion was more likely to happen in the environments that were less quiet and contained more speech, noise, and machine sounds, and in the environments wherein directional microphones and noise reduction algorithms were enabled. The results of survey response prediction further indicated that the participants could have reported more challenging environments and more listening difficulty in the instances of survey incompletion. However, the difference in the distribution of survey responses between the observed responses and the combined observed and predicted responses was small. Conclusion The present study indicates that EMA survey incompletion occurs systematically. Although survey incompletion could bias EMA self-report data, the impact is likely to be small.

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