Reading focus
Syllabus: How Can We Study Change Within People?
Connect the proposed research question to the sampling schedule, momentary items and handling of missed observations.
Why you’re reading it. Treat experience sampling as a set of measurement and design choices.
A question to consider. A participant ignores prompts during stressful meetings. How could that pattern distort an estimated stress–context association, and what could the study record to assess it?
Why this reading
Asking about experience in daily life changes both what researchers observe and what participants must do. Myin-Germeys and colleagues connect experience sampling to concrete decisions about questions, occasions and analysis.
Before you read
Experience sampling uses repeated reports close to the experience of interest. Time-based and event-based schedules observe different sets of occasions. Reports are nested within people, and nearby observations may be dependent.
Read for
- Compare the clinical questions with the sampling schedules and items needed to answer them.
- Examine burden, missing responses, reactivity and whether measures have adequate validity for momentary use.
Consider afterwards
- A phone survey asks about stress only when a participant chooses to respond. What could be missing from the resulting picture, and how could the design investigate that possibility?
Editorial context
The review describes opportunities for research and clinical use as understood in 2018. These opportunities are not proof that monitoring improves care. Momentary reports reduce some recall demands but do not remove interpretation, selection or measurement problems. Privacy, consent and access to technology matter when repeated reports expose daily routines.