Abstract
New technologies (e.g., smartphones) have made it easier to conduct Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies and thereby collect longitudinal data in situ. However, limiting interruption burden (i.e., the strain of being pulled out of everyday life) remains a challenge, especially when assessments are frequent and/or must be made immediately after an event, such as when capturing the severity of clinical symptoms in everyday life. Here, we describe a wrist-worn microcomputer programmed with a Physical Analogue Scale (PAS) as a novel approach to ESM in everyday life. The PAS uses the position of a participant's forearm between flat and fully upright as a response scale like a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) uses continuous ratings on a horizontal line. We present data from two pilot studies (4-week field study and lab study) and data from a 2-week ESM study on social media ostracism (i.e., when one's social media message is ignored; N = 53 participants and 2,272 event- and time-based assessments) to demonstrate the feasibility of this novel approach for event- and time-based assessments, and highlight advantages of our approach. PAS angles were accurate and reliable, and VAS and PAS values were highly correlated. Furthermore, we replicated past research on cyber ostracism, by finding that being ignored resulted in significantly stronger feelings of being offended, which was more pronounced when ignored by a group compared to a single person. Furthermore, participants did not find it overly difficult to complete the assessments using the wearable and the PAS. We suggest that the PAS is a valid measurement procedure in order to assess fleeting and/or frequent micro-situations in everyday life. The source code and administration application are freely available.
Highlights
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM)—that is, the collection of longitudinal data from participants in their everyday lives—has contributed to psychologists’ understanding of how people behave in the real world [1], but has enhanced understanding in other disciplines, such as psychiatry [see special issue [2]] and economics [3]
High interruption burden might result in low compliance, which results in missing data, which in turn may introduce measurement error and selection bias, i.e., data quality decreases and the advantages of ESM studies vanish
All extraversion items were highly intercorrelated between the Physical Analogue Scale (PAS) and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS)
Summary
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM)—that is, the collection of longitudinal data from participants in their everyday lives—has contributed to psychologists’ understanding of how people behave in the real world [1], but has enhanced understanding in other disciplines, such as psychiatry [see special issue [2]] and economics [3]. Limiting interruption burden (i.e., the strain of being pulled out of everyday life) remains a challenge, especially when participants must make frequent and/or immediate assessments, such as when capturing the severity of symptoms in everyday life [i.e., [5, 6]]. High interruption burden might result in low compliance, which results in missing data, which in turn may introduce measurement error and selection bias, i.e., data quality decreases and the advantages of ESM studies vanish. We describe how a wearable microcomputer programmed with a Physical Analogue Scale (PAS) can be used to assess fleeting and/or frequent events in everyday life. We utilize data from two pilot studies and an ESM study on social media ostracism to demonstrate the advantages of our approach for reliable and accurate event- and time-based assessments
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