Investigating Affective Responding to Daily Positive Events Among Adolescents Using Ecological Momentary Assessment

2021 ◽  
pp. 027243162110580
Author(s):  
Sarah K. Chun ◽  
Katherine S. Benjamin ◽  
Amy H. Mezulis

The experience of positive events is associated with increased positive affect, which can beneficially impact the physical and mental health outcomes of adolescents. Despite an increase in important life events during adolescence, little research has examined the influence of positive events on affect in this population. This study used Ecological Momentary Assessment to investigate individual differences in the effects of daily positive events on momentary positive and negative affect and event-specific positive affect among 136 adolescents ( M age = 13.03 years). Results indicated that interpersonal and independent events elicited greater event-specific positive affect than non-interpersonal and dependent events. Dependent interpersonal events were associated with the greatest positive affect compared to other combinations of event types. Gender did not moderate these effects. These findings may address the gap in the literature regarding the types of daily positive events that elicit the most positive affect in adolescents, and in turn, may enhance well-being.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. 165-165
Author(s):  
Muzi Na ◽  
Nan Dou ◽  
Yujie Liao ◽  
Sara Jimenez Rincon ◽  
Lori Francis ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives Food insecurity is a dynamic phenomenon within a given month and across seasons. It remains unknown how food insecurity influences low-income adults’ day-to-day affective well-being, which is associated with long-term mental and physical health. In this pilot study, we explored the association between daily food insecurity and affect over a 2-month period (spanning 2 seasons) in a sample of low-income adults in Central Pennsylvania. Methods A total of 22 healthy low-income adults were recruited during the fall months (September, October, or November) in 2019, 18 of whom were also followed in the winter months (February or March) in 2020. Using an ecological momentary assessment framework administered on smart phones over a three-week-long wave (2nd – 4th week) in each survey month, daily food insecurity (once daily), and positive and negative affect (5 times daily) were collected. Time Varying Effect Models were used to estimate the association between levels of daily food insecurity and daily aggregated positive/negative affect as a function of study day, adjusting for gender, race/ethnicity, employment, and poverty status. Results A total of 713 person-days (84.9% of what was possible) of daily-level data was collected. Food insecurity was reported in 42.9% and 36.0% of participants in the fall and winter months, respectively. Greater daily food insecurity was associated with significantly lower positive affect scores in the 3rd week of the fall months (β ranged from −1.40 (95% CI −2.62, −0.18) to −3.17 (95% CI: −5.93, −0.42)) and in the 4th week of the winter months (β ranged from −2.24 (95% CI: −4.08, −0.39) to −2.84 (95% CI: −4.28, −1.40)). No consistent association was identified between daily food insecurity and negative affect. Conclusions Daily food insecurity was associated with lower positive affect in the second half of the months in both fall and winter seasons. Future large observational studies should verify our study findings in order to better identify, target, and intervene in food insecure adults who are at-risk of adverse mental health outcomes. Funding Sources The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (UL1TR002014) and the Broadhurst Career Development Professorship for the Study of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeideh Heshmati ◽  
Zita Oravecz

Most assessments of well-being have relied on retrospective accounts, measured by global evaluative well-being scales. Following the recent debates focused on the assessment of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being based on the elements of the PERMA theory, the current study aimed to shed further light onto the measurement of PERMA elements in daily life and their temporal dynamics. Through an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) design (N=160), we examined the dynamics of change (e.g., baselines and intra-individual variability) in the PERMA elements using the mPERMA measure, which is an EMA-adapted version of the PERMA Profiler. Findings revealed that momentary experiences of well-being, quantified via PERMA elements, map onto their corresponding hedonic or eudaimonic well-being components, and its dynamical features provide novel insights into predicting global well-being. This work offers avenues for future research to assess well-being in real-time and real-world contexts in ecologically valid ways, while eliminating recall bias.


2021 ◽  
Vol Publish Ahead of Print ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy A. Shea ◽  
Lisa M. Bellini ◽  
Sanjay V. Desai ◽  
Frances K. Barg ◽  
Whitney Eriksen ◽  
...  

Assessment ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 1683-1698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey B. Scott ◽  
Martin J. Sliwinski ◽  
Matthew Zawadzki ◽  
Robert S. Stawski ◽  
Jinhyuk Kim ◽  
...  

Despite widespread interest in variance in affect, basic questions remain pertaining to the relative proportions of between-person and within-person variance, the contribution of days and moments, and the reliability of these estimates. We addressed these questions by decomposing negative affect and positive affect variance across three levels (person, day, moment), and calculating reliability using a coordinated analysis of seven daily diary, ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and diary-EMA hybrid studies (across studies age = 18-84 years, total Npersons = 2,103, total Nobservations = 45,065). Across studies, within-person variance was sizeable (negative affect: 45% to 66%, positive affect: 25% to 74%); in EMA more within-person variance was attributable to momentary rather than daily level. Reliability was adequate to high at all levels of analysis (within-person: .73-.91; between-person: .96-1.00) despite different items and designs. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of future intensive studies of affect variance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1160-1160
Author(s):  
Julianne Wilson ◽  
Amanda R Rabinowitz ◽  
Tessa Hart

Abstract Objective In persons with moderate–severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI), we compared traditional measures of mood with dynamic measures of affect derived from ecological momentary assessment (EMA), for the purpose of validating the EMA indices and exploring their unique contributions to emotional assessment. Method 23 community-dwelling participants with chronic msTBI were enrolled in a treatment trial for anxiety and/ or depression. At baseline, participants completed the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 Depression and Anxiety subscales (BSI-D, BSI-A) and the Environmental Reward Observation Scale (EROS), a measure of everyday pleasure and reward. EMA data, including the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), were collected via smartphone 5 times daily for 7–14 days prior to treatment (M = 8.65; SD = 1.87). Spearman correlations tested associations between baseline BSI-D, BSI-A, and EROS scores with both overall means and temporal variability measures for positive and negative affect (PA, NA). Results Mean PA was significantly correlated with BSI-D (rho −0.60, p < 0.05) and EROS (rho 0.72, p < 0.01). Mean NA and affect variability measures were uncorrelated with baseline scores. NA mean and variability were intercorrelated (rho 0.87, p < 0.001), but this was not the case for PA. Conclusion EMA measures of averaged positive affect showed robust relationships with retrospective measures of depression and environmental reward, providing support for the validity of EMA measures of PA, and for use of the EROS in msTBI. While negative findings must be interpreted with caution, the lack of association of affective variability with retrospective measures suggest a unique role for EMA in examining temporal dynamics of affect.


Author(s):  
Larry Chan ◽  
Vedant Das Swain ◽  
Christina Kelley ◽  
Kaya de Barbaro ◽  
Gregory D. Abowd ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Edmund Wilson ◽  
Renee J. Thompson ◽  
Simine Vazire

People fluctuate in their behavior as they go about their daily lives, but little is known about the processes underlying these fluctuations. In two ecological momentary assessment studies (Ns = 124, 415), we examined the extent to which negative and positive affect accounted for the within-person variance in Big Five states. Participants were prompted six times a day over six days (Study 1) or four times a day over two weeks (Study 2) to report their recent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Multilevel modeling results indicated that negative and positive affect account for most, but not all, of the within-person variance in personality states. Importantly, situation variables predicted variance in some personality states even after accounting for fluctuations in affect, indicating that fluctuations in personality states may be more than fluctuations in state affect.


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