Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 21, 2023
Date Accepted: Oct 18, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Selecting an Ecological Momentary Assessment Platform: A Tutorial for Researchers
ABSTRACT
Background:
While ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has been applied in psychological research for decades, delivery methods have evolved with the proliferation of digital technology. Technological advances have engendered opportunities for enhanced accessibility, convenience, measurement precision, and integration with wearable sensors. Notwithstanding, researchers must navigate novel complexities in EMA research design and implementation.
Objective:
Here, we provide guidance on platform selection for clinical scientists launching EMA studies.
Methods:
Our team includes diverse specialties in child and adolescent behavioral and mental health with varying expertise with EMA platforms (e.g., users, developers). We (two research sites) evaluated N = 59 EMA platforms with the goal of identifying the platform(s) with the best fit to our research. We created a list of extant EMA platforms; conducted a web-based review; considered institutional security, privacy, and data management requirements; met with developers; and piloted each of the candidate EMA platforms for one week.
Results:
We selected two EMA platforms, underscoring the importance of determining laboratory- and study-specific priorities. In addition, our project generated 11 considerations for researchers in selecting an EMA platform: (1) developer location, (2) developer involvement, (3) sample characteristics, (4) onboarding, (5) survey design features, (6) sampling scheme and scheduling, (7) viewing results, (8) dashboards, (9) security, privacy, and data management, (10) pricing and cost structure, and (11) future directions. Further, our project yielded a suggested timeline for the EMA platform selection process.
Conclusions:
The current work will guide scientists initiating studies using EMA, an in-vivo, real-time research tool with tremendous promise for facilitating advances in psychological assessment and intervention.
Citation
