JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is an innovative tool to capture in-the-moment health behaviors as people go about their regular lives. EMA is an ideal tool to measure weight-related behaviors, such as parent feeding practices, stress, and dietary intake, as these occur on a daily basis and vary across time and context. A recent systematic review recommended standardized reporting of EMA design for studies that address weight-related behaviors.

Objective:

To answer the call for reporting study designs using EMA, this manuscript describes in detail the EMA design of the Family Matters study and how it was adapted over time to improve functionality and meet the needs of a racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample.

Methods:

Family Matters is an incremental, two-phased, mixed-methods study conducted with a racially/ethnically diverse and immigrant/refugee sample from largely low-income households designed to examine the risk and protective factors for child weight and weight-related behaviors in the home environment. The Family Matters study intentionally recruited White, Black, Hmong, Latino, Native American, and Somali parents with young children. Parents in Phase I of the study completed eight days of EMA on their smart phones, which included 1) signal-contingent surveys (e.g., asking about the parent’s stress at the time of the survey); 2) event-contingent surveys (e.g., descriptions of the meal the child ate); 3) end-of-day surveys (e.g., overall assessment of the child’s day).

Results:

A detailed description of EMA strategies, protocols, and methods used in Phase I of the Family Matters study is provided. Compliance with EMA surveys and participant time spent completing EMA surveys is presented, stratified by race/ethnicity. Additionally, lessons learned while conducting Phase I EMA are shared to document how EMA methods were improved and expanded upon for Phase II of the Family Matters study.

Conclusions:

Results from this study provide an important next step in identifying best practices for EMA use in assessing weight-related behaviors in the home environment.