The newest movisens SensorManager provides all the resources for you to optimize your movisens sensor. In addition to the standard functionality, we've included the ability to update your sensors to their latest firmware version, an essential upgrade for those who'd like to take advantage of the sensor triggering capability of movisensXS.
Studying people in their natural habitat is no longer exclusively the domain of anthropologists in the wild. The jungle and the savannah no longer resemble the day to day experiences of modern urban dwelling homo-sapiens. However the legacy of our past is still locked within our psyche, and unravelling our psychological nature involves researchers utilizing new methods to delve deeper in to our minds and bodies.
The overarching ‘umbrella’ for all of the following research methods is Ambulatory Assessment. Whether you’re performing an Ecological Momentary Assessment or Experience Sampling study, they fall within the scope of Ambulatory Assessment.
The core idea of Ambulatory Assessment is to track parameters outside of the laboratory or clinic. Using electronic diaries and/or physiological sensors, researchers can cast aside the inaccuracy of patient reporting and gain valid real time or near real time data. Data not contaminated by the fallibility of participant recollection or miss reporting, and this allowed researchers a purer glimpse of the “… rich information about the daily lives of individuals who may be studied or treated by clinical scientists and mental health professionals.” (Trull & Ebner-Priemer, 2013)
The best and most concise definition of Ambulatory Assessment comes from the Society for Ambulatory Assessment website:
“Ambulatory Assessment comprises the use of field methods to assess the ongoing behavior, physiology, experience and environmental aspects of people in naturalistic or unconstrained settings. Ambulatory Assessment uses ecologically-valid tools to understand biopsychosocial processes as they unfold naturally in time and in context.”
Whilst Experience Sampling and Ecological Momentary Assessment and Daily Diary Studies are components of Ambulatory Assessment, this term often conjures Physiological Monitoring to mind. Research papers that cite Ambulatory Assessment in their keywords often utilize accelerometers, ECG, and other physiological parameters as the core data in their study.
So that brings us on to Ecological Momentary Assessment and Experience Sampling, two of the key components of Ambulatory Assessment, and just like Ambulatory Assessment, Ecological Momentary Assessment doesn’t really sound that catchy. Now, there’s a subtle difference between EMA and Experience Sampling. First I’ll pass it over to Reed Larson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to recite the abstract from their 1983 article that defined the Experience Sampling Method:
“…the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), a research procedure that consists of asking individuals to provide systematic self-reports at random occasions during the waking hours of a normal week....The ESM obtains information about the private as well as the public aspects of individuals' lives, secures data about behavioral and intrapsychic aspects of daily activity, and obtains reports about people's experiences as they occur, thereby minimizing the effects of reliance on memory and reconstruction.”
Whilst gathering information from people during their daily lives is the primary role of Experience Sampling, the term has become used to describe gathering subjective data over time even within the laboratory or clinical setting. Now, let’s get back to Ecological Momentary Assessment. To perform great craftsmanship, a tradesman requires good tools, and for the researcher Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is an incredibly powerful longitudinal study tool for harnessing subjective data in day to day life. The subtle difference between EMA and ESM (experience sampling methodology) lies in the origins of the two methods. EMA emerged out of the field of behavioral medicine, and as a result often includes physiological parameters or health related questions, and is primarily performed in a person’s day to day normal environment.
In the next part of this series, we’ll delve in to the advantages and drawbacks of Ambulatory Assessment, and discuss the impact of developing technology.
On the 12th of December 2018, movisens joins other exhibitors at the fifth edition of Wearables in Practice (WIP) in Amsterdam. Topics such as non-invasive methods for long-term monitoring of the autonomic nervous system or heartbeat feedback constitute part of this symposium.
We await interesting lectures by Hans Bussmann and Mark Hoogendoorn and would welcome any participants who would like to visit our stand and learn more about new measuring methods.
The following article is part of a series about the "SedentaryMood-Study".
In the last article the practical implementation of the study was described. In the following and last blog post the result of the study is presented.
Result
The results indicate that there is a significant negative influence on the mood dimension alertness-fatigue and on the good-bad mood. In general terms, this means that sedentary behaviour contributes to higher fatigue. Sedenary units (≥ 30 minutes) in which no interruption took place have a particularly negative effect compared to interrupted units.We're delighted to attend the "Digital Media And Developing Minds" conference on the 15th.-18th. October in Long Island, New York, USA. We'll debut our research solutions, with a strong focus on the mobile sensing capabilities of our experience sampling app movisensXS. Our platform offers researchers excellent data collection capabilities to capture on screen behaviour through tracking the use of multiple devices concurrently to get a complete view of participant mobile usage.
We invite delegates to take advantage of our experience and talk with us about our other Behavioural monitoring solutions. Including physiological activity monitoring that provides a complete overview of daily activity over extended durations. Our interactive solutions allow the development of intervention studies, with our activity sensors capable of assessing activity levels, sedentary behaviour time, and even such elements as outdoor exposure and using these parameters to trigger interventions within the app. Combining this with an understanding of the regular mobile phone app use and behaviour promises to offer a detailed insight in this nascent field.
We're looking forward to meeting you all for the first time!
movisens heads abroad to Canada for the 58th annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. The meeting takes place in the Quebec convention centre from the 3rd to the 7th of October. We'll display our unique combination of physiological sensors and experience sampling software, with a key focus on the integration of the two platforms. We look forward to seeing some of our existing customers there, and meeting researchers keen to explore this nascent field.
Amongst a whole array of interesting talks, we're particularly looking forward to the Heart Rate Variability symposium from Julian Thayer on Saturday the 7th. We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all the delegates, and invite them to drop by our table and have a chat about what psychophysiological solutions we can provide for their research.
After the great success of the Move 4 and EcgMove 4, we've incorporated the same suite of innovative improvements to bring you the EdaMove 4 and the LightMove 4.
Click here to see the entire range.
The following article is part of a series about the "SedentaryMood-Study".
The practical implementation of the SedentaryMood-Study
In the last article the applied investigation plan was explained. The following article describes the practical implementation of the study.
Step by step
you can find out more about the study in the next article...
The following article is part of a series about the "SedentaryMood-Study".
Measurement times of the real-time study
In the last article, the sedentary sedimentary triggered e diaries and the randomly selected queries were described. In the next step, the study plan used for the SedentaryMood-Study is explained. Here, the frequency of the mood polls during the course of a day plays an important role.
The exact number of queries depends on the individual participant's level of activity and thus, as in this study, up to 12 queries per day can be expected. More mood queries per day over a longer period of time are not to be recommended in order not to overstrain the associated willingness of the test persons to participate and thus not to endanger the data quality.
On the basis of study results, about three to five days - of which at least one weekend day - are necessary for a representative recording of sedentary behaviour. In view of this, the survey period, the SedentaryMood Study, lasted five days (three working days and two weekend days).
The sample was recruited from the University of Newcastle (UoN, Australia) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany). Participation in the study was linked to the following inclusion criteria: official co-worker of the institution, no illness or injury, and the work was performed predominantly in a sedentary body position.
more about the practical implementation of the study can be found in the next article...