Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Capture Adolescents'

This presentation will describe the EMA methodology and results from our study on early adolescent peer affiliations, moods, perceptions of peers, and activities. Participants were 82 youths in the U.S. Northwest. Participating youth were assessed during several 1-week periods in the fall, winter, and spring of 7^th grade and in the fall of 8^th grade. Participants were prompted to complete the EMA surveys 27 random times during the week-long assessment period when school was not in session, answering questions about who they were with, what they were doing, their mood and perception of their peers who were present, and where they were. The aim of this EMA protocol is to pinpoint risk and protective mechanisms for adolescents by understanding the social contexts and emotional responses to those situations.

Our findings demonstrate an increase in risky contexts. Adult monitoring decreased significantly over time (β = -4.7, p < .001) across the three waves of data during 7^th grade for all participants. Being “out and about” increased significantly and unconditionally over all three waves (β = 1.67, p < .01). We also found that peer characteristics and behaviors were associated with mood. Happiness was moderately associated with being with peers perceived to be popular. Being with peers from whom they received frequent teasing or name calling was associated with sadness, anxiety, and feelings of being left out. We also explored social contexts, mood, and activities, for example, middle school youth were more likely to report physical activity with peers than when alone (t = 5.03, p = .001) and physical activity was also associated with happier mood (t = 2.27, p = .026). These data illustrate the unique findings that EMA methodology can provide. We also connected the EMA data with social network data to examine how perceptions of peer acceptance predicted affiliations with deviant peers. The peer social network data indicated that being with popular peers was associated with decline in deviant peer affiliation for both boys and girls. We will discuss future directions in a current study connecting the EMA data to that of other methodologies, such as social network, questionnaire, and location data.