Session: New Insights to Prevention Sciences from Intensive Longitudinal Data (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium session is to present a series of papers using innovative methodological approaches and intensive longitudinal data to gain new insights to prevention sciences. The symposium supports the conference theme of innovative methods and statistics and brings together researchers from diverse areas, including substance use, risky sexual behavior, and physical health.

The first paper, “Negative Affect and Substance Use Cravings as Dynamical Systems in Sustained Substance Use Recovery”, applies dynamical systems analysis to understand the proximal risk factors in substance use recovery. It is shown that daily measures of substance use cravings and negative affect can be understood as a stable oscillating system, the characteristics of which are associated with social support coping strategy.

The second paper, “Using the Time-Varying Effect Model with Intensive Longitudinal Data to Inform Prevention Research”, discusses how the time-varying effect model (TVEM) can be applied to intensive longitudinal data to uncover new information for creating targeted or tailored interventions. The utility of TVEM is illustrated with an empirical example examining how social and personal characteristics predict risky sexual behavior over time.

The third paper, “Leveraging the Popularity of Wearable Fitness Monitors: Advantages of Using Self-Tracking Data to Study Health Behaviors”, discusses the advantages of commercial wearable fitness monitors in providing rich information on general health behaviors, such as physical activity and sleep. The authors compare nomothetic and idiographic statistical approaches for modeling the dynamic relations among these behaviors at the individual level, and discuss their implications on personalized prevention.

At the end of the symposium, the discussant will provide a discussion of the presentations and moderate a Q&A session.