Session: Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA): A Trajectory Tool Advancing Prevention Science, Research, Practice, and Policy (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

The use of innovative technologies to explore and intervene in real-time is an exciting prospect for prevention research. The papers in this symposium focus on the use of ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine real-time, contextualized factors influencing health and well-being. EMA provides information on momentary and day-to-day experiences and new technologies require fewer resources and place less burden on individual participants while providing immediate feedback to prevention scientists. The use of diverse technologies and methodologies (including populations, sample size, length of time, and outcomes) for collecting EMA data will be described. All papers consider multi-level factors influencing mood, emotions, health, and risk behaviors. Detailed results of each study, including analyses of day-to-day health trajectories, and next steps for providing individualized interventions, will also be explored.

The first paper, “Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA): A Trajectory Tool Advancing Prevention Science, Research, Practice, and Policy”, describes the creation of a novel intervention to improve nutrition behavior and reduce risk for obesity among adolescents. This study used PDA-like devices to collect EMA data, tracking food consumption and contextual data, providing over 5000 observations from 158 participants over a period of 7 days.

The second paper, “Feasibility of Using Texting to Understand Daily Experiences of Violence Among Latina Teens”, examines the use of text messages to learn about daily experiences of violence victimization and perpetration among teens. This study demonstrates the acceptability of this method, with over 2300 responses to survey questions on violence (approximately 5% affirmative) and the majority of participants (60%) reporting at least one episode of violence. Details regarding the context of violence will be explored.

The third paper, “Mood and Behavior Trends Collected Using EMA: 18,000 Texts Later… Methodological Strategies and Lessons Learned”, describes the development and use of an automated EMA system delivered via SMS text messages. This pilot study examined the feasibility and acceptability of using text messages for sending, receiving, and tracking surveys multiple times per day to explore multi-level contextualized information on mood, social network, parental monitoring, health risk and protective behaviors among 24 Latina adolescent females. The results include nearly 18,000 unique text responses demonstrating the acceptability of this economical method of EMA data collection.

This symposium will equip prevention scientists to successfully use real-time EMA methods for health research, policy, and programming.