JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has utility for measuring psychological properties in daily life. Recently, EMA has also allowed researchers to collect data on diverse experiences and symptoms from various subjects.

Objective:

To review the methodological details and usefulness of EMA using mobile phone applications to measure mood and stress in subclinical subjects.

Methods:

We searched PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. This review included studies published in peer-reviewed journals in English between 2008 and November 2017 that used mobile phone applications to measure momentary mood or stress in adults. We excluded studies using ecological momentary interventions (EMIs), studies of smoking, addictions, major psychological populations, and studies measuring non-clinical variables for non-clinical subjects.

Results:

: We reviewed nine selected articles that used EMA via mobile applications to measure momentary mood and stress, and other related variables from various subjects, such as patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, breast cancer, migraine, HIV, depressed mood during pregnancy, and adults with mood changes. Most of the selected studies used signal-contingent at random or semi-random intervals to prompt the momentary measurement. Seven of nine studies used specific applications directly installed on mobile phones and the remainder used mobile phones to link to web-based survey programs.

Conclusions:

The current study provides researchers with useful information regarding methodological details for utilizing EMA to measure mood and stress. This review shows that EMA methods could be effective and reasonable for measuring momentary mood and stress, given that smartphones are ubiquitous in the general population. Therefore, researchers could adopt and utilize EMA methods to measure psychological health outcomes, such as mood and stress, in subclinical populations.