JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) enables individuals to self-report their subjective momentary physical and emotional states. However, certain conditions, including routine observable behaviors (e.g., moods, medication adherence), as well as behaviors that may suggest declines in physical or mental health (e.g., memory losses, compulsive disorders) cannot be easily and reliably measured via self-reports.

Objective:

This work examines a method complementary to EMA denoted as “Peerceived Momentary Assessment" (PeerMA), which enables to involve peers (e.g., family members, friends) to report their perception of the individual’s subjective physical and emotional states. In this paper, we report the feasibility results and identified human factors influencing the acceptance and reliability of the PeerMA method.

Methods:

For this purpose, we conducted two studies of four weeks each, collecting self-reports from 20 participants about their stress, fatigue, anxiety, and well-being, in addition to collecting peer-reported perceptions from 27 of their peers.

Results:

Preliminary results show that some of the peers reported daily assessments for stress, fatigue, anxiety and well-being statistically equal to those reported by the participant. We also show how pairing participant and peer’s assessments in time enables a qualitative and quantitative exploration of unique research questions not possible with EMA-only based assessments. We report on usability and implementation aspects based on the participant’s experience to guide the use of the PeerMA to complement the information obtained via self-reports for observable behaviors, physical and emotional states among healthy individuals.

Conclusions:

It is possible to leverage the PeerMA method as a complement to EMA to assess constructs that fall in the realm of observable behaviors and states in healthy individuals. Clinical Trial: Study Protocols “Exploring the value of social links and human-machine collaboration in the context of stress assessment.” Protocol N. CUREG.201807 approved by the IRB, University of Geneva (CH). Protocol Director: Prof. K. Wac (10.07.2018-31.12.2022). “Studying the Subjective and Objective Momentary as well as Longitudinal Perception of Quality of Life in Different Contexts of Daily Life” Protocol N. 47833 approved by the IRB, Stanford University, USA. Protocol Director: W. Concepcion (22.01.2019-31.12.2099).