von Klipstein Lino, Stadel Marie, Bos Fionneke M, Bringmann Laura F, Riese Harriëtte, Servaas Michelle N
Department of Psychiatry, Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion Regulation (ICPE), University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, PO Box 30.001 (CC72), Groningen, 9700 RB, The Netherlands.
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Qual Life Res. 2025 Mar;34(3):595-604. doi: 10.1007/s11136-024-03848-0. Epub 2024 Nov 27.
The experience sampling method (ESM) is increasingly used as a clinical tool in mental health care. Currently, ESM studies pay relatively little attention to assessing contextual factors, such as a person's experience and perception of events, activities, and social interactions. This has been referred to as the 'contextual black box'. However, personalized context information is essential for applications in clinical settings to gain insight in triggering and maintaining factors of psychopathology. Typically, ESM context items are designed for nomothetic research questions, to capture broad factors that are shared across individuals, such as 'unpleasant events'. We provide an overview of such nomothetic items. We argue that these items have limited clinical utility and describe idiographic alternatives to ESM context assessment to obtain more specific and personalized information about individual clients. Specifically, we present three existing idiographic ESM techniques to context assessment with clinical potential. First, we illustrate open-ended ESM items that prompt clients to fill in text, such as a description of a specific unpleasant event they experienced. Second, we describe personalized response options and self-learning items that ask clients to define personally relevant response categories, such as types of events the client finds unpleasant. Third, we describe personalized ESM items that client and clinician select or formulate together for concepts of interest. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these idiographic techniques. Additionally, we suggest future directions for clinical research aiming to address the 'contextual black box' and enhance the potential of ESM in mental health care.
经验取样法（ESM）越来越多地被用作精神卫生保健中的一种临床工具。目前，ESM研究相对较少关注评估情境因素，例如一个人对事件、活动和社会互动的体验与感知。这被称为“情境黑匣子”。然而，个性化的情境信息对于临床应用至关重要，以便深入了解精神病理学的触发和维持因素。通常，ESM情境项目是为了进行一般规律研究问题而设计的，以捕捉个体之间共享的广泛因素，例如“不愉快事件”。我们概述了此类一般规律项目。我们认为这些项目的临床效用有限，并描述了ESM情境评估的个性化替代方法，以获取有关个体客户更具体和个性化的信息。具体而言，我们介绍了三种具有临床潜力的现有个性化ESM情境评估技术。首先，我们举例说明了开放式ESM项目，这些项目促使客户填写文本，例如描述他们经历的特定不愉快事件。其次，我们描述了个性化的回答选项和自我学习项目，这些项目要求客户定义个人相关的回答类别，例如客户认为不愉快的事件类型。第三，我们描述了客户和临床医生共同选择或制定的针对感兴趣概念的个性化ESM项目。我们讨论了这些个性化技术的优缺点。此外，我们还为旨在解决“情境黑匣子”问题并增强ESM在精神卫生保健中潜力的临床研究提出了未来方向。
