(PS2-42) Timing is Everything: A Tool to Personalize Scheduling of Ecological Momentary Assessment and Interventions

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a data sampling strategy that involves repeated measurement of cognitions, emotions, and/or behaviors as they occur in the real world. Data from EMA studies are commonly used to inform cognitive behavioral interventions for various psychopathologies. Similarly, ecological momentary intervention (EMI), an extension of EMA, facilitates delivery of real-time interventions in participants’ day-to-day lives. For example, EMIs may remind participants to practice therapeutic skills or walk participants through brief interventions; EMA/EMIs can be delivered based on a set schedule (e.g., before bedtime) or based on responses to EMA surveys (e.g., when a participant reports feeling depressed). In particular, the ability for EMA and EMI ability to capture real-time data have made them valuable tools for understanding and intervening on dynamic processes in mental and behavioral health. However, one of the most critical and challenging aspects of designing EMA/EMI studies is determining when and how frequently to deliver EMA/EMIs.

In this presentation, we will use a series of data simulations to demonstrate that decisions for when and how to deliver EMA/EMI are crucial for increasing participant compliance with EMA/EMI and for ensuring that target cognitions/behaviors are being measured and intervened on in the timescales that they unfold. In particular, when delivery of EMA/EMIs are misaligned with participants' daily routines (e.g., sleep and wake times) or the target cognition/behavior, researchers risk high rates of data missingness and low EMA/EMI compliance. Thus, the ability to create flexible, individualized EMA/EMI schedules for participants is vital to improving participant engagement, data quality, and user experience with interventions. To address these issues, we developed a free, open-source web application that generates personalized schedules for EMA/EMI studies based on researchers’ needs; during this talk, we will share various applications for this tool based and show attendees how to make use of this tool for their own studies.

Although many EMA platforms offer flexibility in design, they often come at a high cost or require complex configurations that are difficult for many researchers to implement. The lack of affordable, user-friendly options limits the accessibility of personalized EMA/EMI designs, particularly for those who may not have access to expensive commercial tools. By providing researchers with a more flexible, accessible tool to design EMA/EMI studies, this work aims to improve ecologically-valid measurement of mental health indices and support more tailored interventions to improve a wide range of mental health outcomes across the lifespan.