Experience-sampling procedures enable researchers to record the momentary thoughts, feelings, and actions of people in daily life. The authors explain how palmtop computers have expanded the repertoire of experience-sampling techniques and reduced or eliminated some traditional problems with pen-and-paper methods. As a running example, they illustrate the capabilities of the Experience Sampling Program (ESP), their configurable, freely distributable software environment for designing and running experience-sampling studies on Palm Pilots and Windows CE palmtops.
Affleck, G., Tennen, H., Urrows, S., Higgins, P. (1994). Person and contextual features of daily stress reactivity: Individual differences in relations of undesirable daily events with mood disturbance and chronic pain intensity. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 66, 329-340.
2.
Affleck, G., Tennen, H., Urrows, S., Higgins, P., Abeles, M., Hall, C., Karoly, P., & Newton, C. (1998). Fibromyalgia and women’s pursuit of personal goals: A daily process analysis. Health Psychology, 17, 40-47.
3.
Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., & Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 62, 893-912.
4.
Barrett, D. J., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2000). The Experience-Sampling Program (ESP). Available: (http://www2.bc.edu/%7Ebarretli/esp/)
5.
Barrett, D. J., & Silverman, R. E. (2001). SSH, the Secure Shell: The definitive guide. Cambridge, MA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.
6.
Bolger, N., & Schilling, E. A. (1991). Personality and the problems of everyday life: The role of neuroticism in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors. Journal of Personality, 59, 355-386.
7.
Bradburn, N. M., Rips, L. J., & Shevell, S. K. (1987). Answering autobiographical questions: The impact of memory and inference on surveys. Science, 236, 157-161.
8.
Bryk, A., & Raudenbush, S. (1987). Application of hierarchical linear models to assessing change. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 147-158.
9.
Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1992). Hierarchical linear models. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
10.
Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
11.
Conner, T. S., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2000). Toward an idiographically-infused social psychology: Better measurement of the person within the social situation. Unpublished manuscript, Boston College.
12.
Cote, S., & Moskowitz, D. S. (1998). On the dynamic covariation between interpersonal behavior and affect: Prediction from neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 75, 1032-1046.
13.
Cruise, C. E., Broderick, J., Porter, L., Kaell, A. T., & Stone, A. A. (1996). Reactive events of diary self-assessment in chronic pain patients. Pain, 67, 253-258.
14.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1987). Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175, 526-536.
15.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 56, 5-18.
16.
de Vries, M., Dijkman-Caes, C., & Delespaul, P. (1990). The sampling of experience: A method of measuring the co-occurrence of anxiety and depression in daily life. In J. D. Maser & C. R. Cloninger (Eds.), Comorbidity of mood and anxiety disorders (pp. 707-726). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
17.
Eisenhower, D., Mathiowetz, N. A., & Morganstein, D. (1991). Recall error: Sources and bias reduction techniques. In P. P. Biemer, R. M. Groves, L. E. Lyber, N. A. Mathiowetx, & S. Sudman (Eds.), Measurement errors in surveys (pp. 127-144). New York: Wiley.
18.
Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions?Psychological Review, 99, 550-553.
19.
Feldman, L. A. (1995). Valence focus and arousal focus: Individual differences in the structure of affective experience. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 69, 153-166.
20.
Feldman Barrett, L. (1998). Discrete emotions or dimensions? The role of valence focus and arousal focus. Cognition and Emotion, 12(4), 579-599.
21.
Feldman Barrett, L. (2000). Idiographic variation in circumplex structure: Affective versus semantic focus. Unpublished manuscript, Boston College.
22.
Feldman Barrett, L., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1997). Accuracy of the five-factor model in predicting perceptions of daily social interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(11), 1173-1187.
23.
Feldman Barrett, L., Robin, L., Pietromonaco, P. R., & Eyssell, K. M. (1998). Are women the “more emotional” sex? Evidence from emotional experiences in social context. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 555-578.
24.
Gilbert, D. T., & Hixon, J. G. (1991). The trouble of thinking: Activation and application of stereotypic beliefs. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 60, 509-517.
25.
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102, 4-27.
26.
Harlow, R. E., & Cantor, N. (1995). To whom do people turn when things go poorly? Task orientation and functional social contacts. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 69(2), 329-340.
27.
Harrison, D. A., & McLaughlin, M. E. (1993). Cognitive processes in self-report responses: Tests of item context effects in work attitude measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 129-140.
28.
Hormuth, S. E. (1986). The sampling of experiences in situ. Journal of Personality, 54, 262-293.
29.
Hurlburt, R. T. (1997). Randomly sampling thinking in the natural environment. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 65, 941-949.
30.
Izard, C. E. (1977). Human emotions. New York: Plenum Press.
31.
Jamner, L. D., Shapiro, D., & Jarvik, M. E. (1999). Nicotine reduces the frequency of anger reports in smokers and nonsmokers with high but not low hostility: An ambulatory study. Experimental & Clinical Psychopharmacology, 7, 454-463.
32.
Kamarck, T., Shiffman, S., Smithline, L., Goodie, J., Paty, J., Gnys, M., & Yi-Kuan Jong, J. (1998). Effects of task strain, social conflict, and emotional activation on ambulatory cardiovascular activity: Daily life consequences of recurring stress in a multiethnic adult sample. Health Psychology, 17, 17-29.
33.
Kenny, D., Kashy, D., & Bolger, N. (1997). Data analysis in social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Linzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed., pp. 233-265). New York: McGraw-Hill.
34.
Kreft, I., & de Leeuw, J. (1998). Introducing multilevel modeling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
35.
Larsen, R. J. (1987). The stability of mood variability: A spectral analytic approach to daily mood assessments. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 52, 1195-1204.
36.
Larsen, R. J., & Cutler, S. E. (1996). The complexity of individual emotional lives: A within-subject analysis of affect structure. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 15, 206-230
37.
Larsen, R., & Kasimatis, M. (1991). Day-to-day physical symptoms: Individual differences in the occurrence, duration, and emotional concomitants of minor daily illnesses. Journal of Personality, 59, 387-424.
38.
Larson, R. W., & Almeida, D. M. (1999). Emotional transmission in the daily lives of families: A new paradigm for studying family process. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61(1), 5-20.
39.
Laurenceau, J. P., Feldman Barrett, L., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: The importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 74(5), 1238-1251.
40.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper.
41.
Litt, M. D., Cooney, N. L., & Morse, P. (1998). Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) with alcoholics: Methodological problems and potential solutions. Health Psychology, 17, 48-52.
42.
Marco, C. A., & Suls, J. (1993). Daily stress and the trajectory of mood: Spillover, response assimilation, contrast, and chronic negative affectivity. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 64, 1053-1063.
43.
McFall, R. M. (1970). Parameters of self-monitoring. In R. B. Stuart (Ed.), Behavioral self-management: Strategies, techniques, and outcome (pp. 196-214). New York: Brunner/Mazel.
44.
Nezlek, J. B., Wheeler, L., & Reis, H. T. (1983). Studies of social participation. New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science, 15, 57-73.
45.
Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
46.
Pietromonaco, P. R., & Feldman Barrett, L. (1997). Working models of attachment and daily social interactions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 73, 1409-1423.
47.
Reis, H. T., & Gable, S. L. (2000). Event sampling and other methods for studying daily experience. In H. T. Judd & C. M. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (pp. 190-222). New York: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Ross, M. (1989). Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories. Psychological Review, 96(2), 341-357.
49.
Sheth, A. P., & Larson, J. A. (1990). Federated database systems for managing distributed, heterogeneous, and autonomous databases. ACM Computing Surveys, 22, 183-236.
50.
Shiffman, S. (2000). Real-time self-report of momentary states in the natural environment: Computerized ecological momentary assessment. In A. A. Stone, J. S. Turkkan, C. A. Cachrach, J. B. Jobe, H. S. Kurtzman, & V. S. Cain (Eds.), The science of self-report: Implications for research and practice (pp. 277-296). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
51.
Shiffman, S., Engberg, J., Paty, J. A., Perz, W., Gnys, M., Kassel, J. D., & Hickcox, M. (1997). A day at a time: Predicting smoking lapse from daily urge. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106, 104-116.
52.
Shiffman, S., & Stone, A. A. (1998). Ecological momentary assessment: A new tool for behavioral medicine research. In D. Krantz & A. Baum (Eds.), Technology and methods in behavioral medicine (pp. 117-131). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
53.
Steiger, H., Gauvin, L., Jabalpurwala, S., Seguin, J. R., & Stotland, S. (1999). Hypersensitivity to social interactions in bulimic syndromes: Relationship to binge eating. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 67, 765-775.
54.
Stein, N., & Trabasso, T. (1992). The organization of emotional experience: Creating links among emotion, thinking, language, and intentional action. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 225-245.
55.
Steptoe, A., Cropley, M., & Joekes, K. (2000). Task demands and the pressures of everyday life: Associations between cardiovascular reactivity and work blood pressure and heart rate. Health Psychology, 19, 46-54.
56.
Stone, A., Kessler, R., & Haythornthwaite, J. (1991). Measuring daily events and experiences: Decisions for the researcher. Journal of Personality, 59, 575-608.
57.
Stone, A. A., & Shiffman, S. (1992). Reflections on the intensive measurement of stress, coping, and mood, with an emphasis on daily measures. Psychology and Health, 7, 115-129.
58.
Stone, A. A., & Shiffman, S. (1994). Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in behavioral medicine. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 16, 199-202.
59.
Swendsen, J. D., Tennen, H., Carney, M. A., Affleck, G., Willard, A., & Hromi, A., (2000). Mood and alcohol consumption: An experience sampling test of the self-medication hypothesis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 198-204.
60.
Wheeler, L., & Reis, H. (1991). Self-recording of everyday life events: Origins, types, and uses. Journal of Personality, 59, 339-354.
