A Comparison of Signal- and Event-Contingent Ambulatory Assessment of Interpersonal Behavior and Affect in Social Situations

Abstract

Ambulatory assessment (e.g., ecological momentary assessment) is now widely used in psychological research, yet key design decisions remain largely informed by methodological lore as opposed to systematic inquiry. The present study experimentally tested whether signal- (e.g., random prompt) and event-contingent (e.g., complete a survey every time a target event occurs) recording procedures of interpersonal behavior and affect in social situations yield equivalent quality and quantity of data. Participants (N = 286) completed baseline questionnaires, underwent cluster randomization to either a signal- or event-contingent condition, then completed one week of ambulatory assessment during which participants answered questions about their social behavior and affect tied to their social interactions. Conditions were compared on response frequency, means and variances of interpersonal behavior and affect, correlations between interpersonal behavior and affect within-person, and associations between momentary behavior and affect and baseline variables (e.g., big-five traits). Results indicated that signal- and event-contingent recording techniques provided equivalent data quality, suggesting that researchers can use the two methodologies interchangeably to draw conclusions about means, variances, and associations when examining social interactions. However, results also showed that event-contingent recording returned, on average, a higher number of reported social interactions per individual and this was true for most time-periods of the day. Thus, event-contingent recording may hold advantages for studying frequency and timing of social interactions.

A Day in the Life of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Preliminary Analysis of Within-Day Emotion Generation and Regulation

“…To more accurately capture these dynamics, we encourage future researchers to use event-contingent reporting so participants can more directly connect the experience of particularly intense emotions with their consequences. We believe this would be feasible given previous work demonstrating similar levels of data quality and number of responses regarding affective and behavioral outcomes between randomly scheduled and event-contingent reporting (Himmelstein et al, 2019).…”

The Effects of Sampling Frequency and Questionnaire Length on Perceived Burden, Compliance, and Careless Responding in Experience Sampling Data in a Student Population

“…Many of these choices are thought to be associated with a trade-off between the aim to collect as much information as possible on the one hand, and the risk of compromising data quantity and quality as a result of the intensive assessment on the other (Arslan, Reitz, Driebe, Gerlach, & Penke 2019;May, Junghaenel, Ono, & Stone, 2018). Yet, methodological research into the effects of different design choices on data quantity and quality is sparse, which means that there is currently insufficient empirical evidence to base design decisions on (Himmelstein, Woods, & Wright, 2019).…”

Assessing Personality States: What to Consider when Constructing Personality State Measures

“…Secondly, huge differences exist in how state measures have been developed. With few exceptions (Bleidorn, 2009; Himmelstein et al, 2019; Moskowitz, 1994; Newman, Sachs, Stone, & Schwarz, 2019; Ostojic‐Aitkens, Brooker, & Miller, 2019; Zimmermann et al, 2019, Study 2), the state measures were not tested and validated in an independent sample, before the data collection of the substantive study. The most common way to developing state measures thus far seems to be to take items or adjectives that were used to assess personality traits and transform them into state measures (e.g.…”

“…Yet despite all the theory and studies already existing, state assessments are often constructed in a rather ad hoc manner. In comparison with the abundance of guidelines to construct trait measures (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014; Borsboom, 2006; Borsboom, Mellenbergh, & van Heerden, 2004; Cronbach & Meehl, 1955; Loevinger, 1957; Messick, 1980, 1995; Ziegler, 2014), similar literature just begins to emerge for state assessments (Himmelstein, Woods, & Wright, 2019; e.g. Hofmans, De Clercq, Kuppens, Verbeke, & Widiger, 2019; Wright & Zimmermann, 2019; Zimmermann et al, 2019).…”