Ambulatory Assessment in Behavioral Science

To describe the diverse methodologies for researching daily life a variety of terms have been coined: ecological momentary assessment (EMA), ambulatory assessment, experience sampling method (ESM), real-time data capture, or digital phenotyping, just to name a few. In line with the definition of the international society devoted to researching daily life Society for Ambulatory Assessment (SAA), these various terms serve to highlight the different origins and ancestors. Researchers in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States started developing cutting-edge methods to assess dynamics of behavior and experience in everyday life in the 1970s and 1980s. Although the diverse backgrounds can be clearly differentiated, with Ambulatory Assessment having a focus on combining e-diaries with physiological and behavioral monitoring—ESM, by using paper-pencil diaries and pagers, and EMA, by utilizing e-diaries early on—these research groups coined their terms to describe a broad set of tools to assess affective experiences, cognition, behavior, and physiological processes in daily life. Accordingly, the Society for Ambulatory Assessment introduced “ambulatory assessment” as the umbrella term, covering a range of real-time data capture methodologies that originate from different scientific disciplines (psychology, medicine, computer science, etc.), and it focuses on the common goal, namely, to assess the ongoing behavior, physiology, experience, and environmental aspects of people in naturalistic settings. Distinct features of ambulatory assessment, which differentiates it from traditional assessment approaches like retrospective questionnaires or laboratory-based techniques, include: (1) assessment of data in the real world, increasing the ecological validity and generalizability of the method, (2) focus on individuals’ momentary or very recent states to minimize retrospective biases, (3) ability to study within-subject processes and dynamics, (4) possibility for multimodal and context-specific assessments, and (5) use of real-time analyses to trigger situational assessments and interventions.