Abstract
Undertaking an experience-sampling study via smartphones is complex. Scheduling and sending mobile notifications often requires the use of proprietary software that imposes limits on participants’ operating systems (whether iOS or Android) or the types of questions that can be asked via the application. We have developed an open-source platform—Samply—which overcomes these limitations. Researchers can access the entire interface via a browser, manage studies, schedule and send notifications linking to online surveys or experiments created in any Internet-based service or software, and monitor participants' responses—all without the coding skills usually needed to program a native mobile application. Participants can download the Samply Research mobile application for free from Google Play or the App Store, join a specific study, receive notifications and web links to surveys or experiments, and track their involvement. The mobile application leverages the power of the React Native JavaScript library, which allows it to be rendered in the native code of Android and iOS mobile operating systems. We describe Samply, provide a step-by-step example of conducting an experience-sampling study, and present the results of two validation studies. Study 1 demonstrates how we improved the website’s usability for researchers. Study 2 validates the mobile application’s data recording ability by analyzing a survey’s participation rate. The application’s possible limitations and how mobile device settings might affect its reliability are discussed.
Highlights
The ways in which researchers have been able to observe participants have changed significantly over the years
We subsequently provide a step-by-step tutorial for researchers interested in conducting a study using Samply, and we present the results of two validation studies whose goals were to (1) improve the web app’s design and usability for researchers, and (2) validate the data collected through the Samply Research mobile app by using an external survey’s results as a criterion
Eight of the critical problems were related to the use of the cron format in scheduling notifications, and the other three involved the display of scheduled notifications
Summary
The ways in which researchers have been able to observe participants have changed significantly over the years. When Barker and Wright (1951) turned the town of Oskaloosa in Kansas into their field laboratory and studied a boy’s life via continuous observation, there were no more advanced technologies than cameras and microphones to capture phenomena as they occurred in their natural settings. Continuous field observation was costly and burdensome, and a careful process was required to distill the full mass of information to its
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