Experience sampling asks people about their experience and behaviour several times a day, in the situations in which they occur. Which situations end up in the data depends on when the prompts arrive: on a fixed or random schedule, or when an event such as arriving at a place occurs.
This line of research develops tools that send such prompts to participants’ own smartphones and evaluates how reliably they work. Samply schedules notifications that link to any online survey or experiment, without programming a native app. The geofencing studies tested prompts triggered by entering or leaving a location, a design in which no location data need to reach the researcher. A web survey combined with a one-month experience-sampling study examined well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic both between and within persons.
A simulation study in preparation addresses statistical power when the number of prompts per person is random, as it is in event-triggered designs. The ESM Power & Design Planner makes these simulations available for study planning.
Schedules and sends notifications for experience-sampling and diary studies to a free smartphone app for iOS and Android. Each notification links to an online survey or experiment. Schedules can be fixed, randomised, triggered by location or driven by real-time event data. Free for research and hosted at the University of Konstanz.
Power and precision estimates from simulation for experience-sampling designs, including designs in which the number of observations per person is random. The simulation code is open source.