School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Dundee, UK.
J Health Serv Res Policy. 2011 Jul;16(3):172-6. doi: 10.1258/jhsrp.2010.010016. Epub 2011 May 4.
Understanding the environmental and behavioural predictors of wellbeing is a key driver of health and social care research. Research set in the social world examines the relationships between behavioural, cognitive, emotional and environmental factors, linking these to disease or social ills with the aim of providing better preventive or treatment services. Much of this research is based on retrospective measurement tools, such as questionnaires or interviews. However, retrospective accounts are prone to bias arising from the influence of the participant's current affective state on autobiographical memory and error-inducing heuristic strategies related to memory. Participant introspection also biases self-reports of behaviour and symptoms. This essay offers a critical examination of the advantages of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods over retrospective accounts in understanding social phenomena. Advantages of EMA include collection of longitudinal data from a representative part of the participant's daily experience, in real time and in the participant's natural environment. EMA accounts are gathered more closely in time to the event and are less biased by heuristic, autobiographical memory strategies. Real-time longitudinal data may be combined from a range of devices or forms of data collection; for example, self-report can be linked with objective physiological data. EMA allows testing of within-person variation in variables of interest in a way that is difficult to achieve using retrospective measures and between-person (group level) designs. EMA approaches provide not just more data, but better data than previously, allowing the application of more powerful analytic techniques to critical, real life questions than ever before.
了解环境和行为预测因素对幸福感的影响是健康和社会保健研究的关键驱动因素。在社会环境中进行的研究考察了行为、认知、情感和环境因素之间的关系，将这些因素与疾病或社会弊病联系起来，旨在提供更好的预防或治疗服务。这项研究中的大部分都是基于回顾性测量工具，例如问卷或访谈。然而，回顾性描述容易受到参与者当前情感状态对自传体记忆的影响以及与记忆相关的诱导启发式策略的偏差。参与者的内省也会使他们对行为和症状的自我报告产生偏差。本文批判性地考察了生态瞬时评估 (EMA) 方法在理解社会现象方面相对于回顾性描述的优势。EMA 的优点包括从参与者日常经验中有代表性的部分实时收集纵向数据，并在参与者的自然环境中进行。EMA 描述在时间上更接近事件，并且受到启发式、自传体记忆策略的影响较小。实时纵向数据可以从多种设备或数据收集形式中进行组合；例如，可以将自我报告与客观的生理数据相关联。EMA 可以测试感兴趣的变量在个体内的变化，这是使用回顾性测量和个体间（群体水平）设计难以实现的。EMA 方法不仅提供了更多的数据，而且比以往任何时候都提供了更好的数据，从而可以将更强大的分析技术应用于以前难以解决的现实生活中的关键问题。
