Do delayed responses introduce bias in ecological momentary assessment? Evidence from comparisons between self-reported and objective physical activity.

Introduction: Delayed responses are a common yet often overlooked aspect of participant compliance in ecological momentary assessment (EMA) research. This study investigated whether response delays introduce selection bias in the moments captured by EMA.

Methods: Participants ( = 339) self-reported their physical activity behaviors using EMA five times a day over 7 days while wearing a continuous physical activity monitor.

Evidence Supports the Validity and Reliability of Response Times from a Brief Survey as a Digital Biomarker for Processing Speed in a Large Panel Study.

Survey response times (RTs) have hitherto untapped potential to allow researchers to gain more detailed insights into the cognitive performance of participants in online panel studies. We examined if RTs recorded from a brief online survey could serve as a digital biomarker for processing speed. Data from 9,893 adults enrolled in the nationally representative Understanding America Study were used in the analyses.

Protocol of randomized-controlled trial to examine the effectiveness of three different interventions to reduce healthcare provider burnout.

Background: Burnout is among the greatest challenges facing healthcare today. Healthcare providers have been found to experience burnout at significant rates, with COVID-19 exacerbating the challenge. Burnout in the healthcare setting has been associated with decreases in job satisfaction, productivity, professionalism, quality of care, and patient satisfaction, as well as increases in career choice regret, intent to leave, and patient safety incidents.

Early Identification of Cognitive Impairment in Community Environments Through Modeling Subtle Inconsistencies in Questionnaire Responses: Machine Learning Model Development and Validation.

Background: The underdiagnosis of cognitive impairment hinders timely intervention of dementia. Health professionals working in the community play a critical role in the early detection of cognitive impairment, yet still face several challenges such as a lack of suitable tools, necessary training, and potential stigmatization.

Objective: This study explored a novel application integrating psychometric methods with data science techniques to model subtle inconsistencies in questionnaire response data for early identification of cognitive impairment in community environments.

Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of a Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior Identity Scale: Survey Study With Two Independent Samples of Adults in the United States.

Background: Emerging evidence suggests a positive association between relevant aspects of one's psychological identity and physical activity engagement, but the current understanding of this relationship is primarily based on scales designed to assess identity as a person who exercises, leaving out essential aspects of physical activities (eg, incidental and occupational physical activity) and sedentary behavior.

Objective: The goal of this study is to evaluate the validity of a new physical activity and sedentary behavior (PA/SB) identity scale using 2 independent samples of US adults.

Methods: In study 1, participants answered 21 candidate items for the PA/SB identity scale and completed the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF).

Understanding disability benefits decision-making among adults with self-reported work disabilities: A qualitative study.

Background: Take-up gaps in safety net programs, long documented in the US, are an important policy problem as non-take up compromises the equity objectives and efficacy of programs. The Social Security Disability program is an example of this: more than 20 million adults report a work disability, but only around 11 million currently receive disability benefits through the Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income programs.

Objectives: We examine decision-making around benefits application among adults with self-reported work disability who have never applied for disability benefits.

Can you tell people's cognitive ability level from their response patterns in questionnaires?

Questionnaires are ever present in survey research. In this study, we examined whether an indirect indicator of general cognitive ability could be developed based on response patterns in questionnaires. We drew on two established phenomena characterizing connections between cognitive ability and people's performance on basic cognitive tasks, and examined whether they apply to questionnaires responses.

Cognitive Functioning and the Quality of Survey Responses: An Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis of 10 Epidemiological Studies of Aging.

Objectives: Self-reported survey data are essential for monitoring the health and well-being of the population as it ages. For studies of aging to provide precise and unbiased results, it is necessary that the self-reported information meets high psychometric standards. In this study, we examined whether the quality of survey responses in panel studies of aging depends on respondents' cognitive abilities.

Attrition from longitudinal ageing studies and performance across domains of cognitive functioning: an individual participant data meta-analysis.

Objectives: This paper examined the magnitude of differences in performance across domains of cognitive functioning between participants who attrited from studies and those who did not, using data from longitudinal ageing studies where multiple cognitive tests were administered.

Design: Individual participant data meta-analysis.

Participants: Data are from 10 epidemiological longitudinal studies on ageing (total n=209 518) from several Western countries (UK, USA, Mexico, etc).

Using Attributes of Survey Items to Predict Response Times May Benefit Survey Research.

Researchers have become increasingly interested in response times to survey items as a measure of cognitive effort. We used machine learning to develop a prediction model of response times based on 41 attributes of survey items (e.g.

Virtual Human-Delivered Interviews for Patients With Chronic Pain: Feasibility, Acceptability, and a Pilot Randomized Trial of Standard Medical, Psychosocial, and Educational Interviews.

Objective: Seminal advances in virtual human (VH) technology have introduced highly interactive, computer-animated VH interviewers. Their utility for aiding in chronic pain care is unknown. We developed three interactive telehealth VH interviews-a standard pain-focused, a psychosocial risk factor, and a pain psychology and neuroscience educational interview.

Reliability and Validity of Noncognitive Ecological Momentary Assessment Survey Response Times as an Indicator of Cognitive Processing Speed in People's Natural Environment: Intensive Longitudinal Study.

Background: Various populations with chronic conditions are at risk for decreased cognitive performance, making assessment of their cognition important. Formal mobile cognitive assessments measure cognitive performance with greater ecological validity than traditional laboratory-based testing but add to participant task demands. Given that responding to a survey is considered a cognitively demanding task itself, information that is passively collected as a by-product of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may be a means through which people's cognitive performance in their natural environment can be estimated when formal ambulatory cognitive assessment is not feasible.

Shedding light on participant selection bias in Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies: Findings from an internet panel study.

Although the potential for participant selection bias is readily acknowledged in the momentary data collection literature, very little is known about uptake rates in these studies or about differences in the people that participate versus those who do not. This study analyzed data from an existing Internet panel of older people (age 50 and greater) who were offered participation into a momentary study (n = 3,169), which made it possible to compute uptake and to compare many characteristics of participation status. Momentary studies present participants with brief surveys multiple times a day over several days; these surveys ask about immediate or recent experiences.

Just-in-time adaptive ecological momentary assessment (JITA-EMA).

Interest in just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI) has rapidly increased in recent years. One core challenge for JITAI is the efficient and precise measurement of tailoring variables that are used to inform the timing of momentary intervention delivery. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is often used for this purpose, even though EMA in its traditional form was not designed specifically to facilitate momentary interventions.

Developing Early Markers of Cognitive Decline and Dementia Derived From Survey Response Behaviors: Protocol for Analyses of Preexisting Large-scale Longitudinal Data.

Background: Accumulating evidence shows that subtle alterations in daily functioning are among the earliest and strongest signals that predict cognitive decline and dementia. A survey is a small slice of everyday functioning; nevertheless, completing a survey is a complex and cognitively demanding task that requires attention, working memory, executive functioning, and short- and long-term memory. Examining older people's survey response behaviors, which focus on how respondents complete surveys irrespective of the content being sought by the questions, may represent a valuable but often neglected resource that can be leveraged to develop behavior-based early markers of cognitive decline and dementia that are cost-effective, unobtrusive, and scalable for use in large population samples.

Inferring Cognitive Abilities from Response Times to Web-Administered Survey Items in a Population-Representative Sample.

Monitoring of cognitive abilities in large-scale survey research is receiving increasing attention. Conventional cognitive testing, however, is often impractical on a population level highlighting the need for alternative means of cognitive assessment. We evaluated whether response times (RTs) to online survey items could be useful to infer cognitive abilities.

Estimating reliabilities and correcting for sampling error in indices of within-person dynamics derived from intensive longitudinal data.

Psychology has witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of intensive longitudinal data (ILD) to study within-person processes, accompanied by a growing number of indices used to capture individual differences in within-person dynamics (WPD). The reliability of WPD indices is rarely investigated and reported in empirical studies. Unreliability in these indices can bias parameter estimates and yield erroneous conclusions.

Quality of Survey Responses at Older Ages Predicts Cognitive Decline and Mortality Risk.

Background And Objectives: It is widely recognized that survey satisficing, inattentive, or careless responding in questionnaires reduce the quality of self-report data. In this study, we propose that such low-quality responding (LQR) can carry substantive meaning at older ages. Completing questionnaires is a cognitively demanding task and LQR among older adults may reflect early signals of cognitive deficits and pathological aging.

Vague quantifiers demonstrate little susceptibility to frame of reference effects.

Comparison standards that people use when responding to survey questions, also called Frames of Reference (FoRs), can influence the validity of self-report responses. The effects of FoRs might be the stronger for items using vague quantifier (VQ) scales, which are particularly prominent in quality of life research, compared with numeric responses. This study aims to investigate the impact of FoRs on self-report measures by examining how imposing a specific FoR in survey questions affects (a) the response levels of VQ and numeric scales and (b) the relationship between VQs and a quantitative responses to the same question.

Subtle mistakes in self-report surveys predict future transition to dementia.

Introduction: We investigate whether indices of subtle reporting mistakes derived from responses in self-report surveys are associated with dementia risk.

Methods: We examined 13,831 participants without dementia from the prospective, population-based Health and Retirement Study (mean age 69 ± 10 years, 59% women). Participants' response patterns in 21 questionnaires were analyzed to identify implausible responses (multivariate outliers), incompatible responses (Guttman errors), acquiescent responses, random errors, and the proportion of skipped questions.

Explaining age differences in the memory-experience gap.

Emotions and symptoms are often overestimated in retrospective ratings, a phenomenon referred to as the "memory-experience gap." Some research has shown that this gap is less pronounced among older compared to younger adults for self-reported negative affect, but it is not known whether these age differences are evident consistently across domains of well-being and why these age differences emerge. In this study, we examined age differences in the memory-experience gap for emotional (positive and negative affect), social (loneliness), and physical (pain, fatigue) well-being.

An informatics approach to examine decision-making impairments in the daily life of individuals with depression.

Mental health informatics studies methods that collect, model, and interpret a wide variety of data to generate useful information with theoretical or clinical relevance to improve mental health and mental health care. This article presents a mental health informatics approach that is based on the decision-making theory of depression, whereby daily life data from a natural sequential decision-making task are collected and modeled using a reinforcement learning method. The model parameters are then estimated to uncover specific aspects of decision-making impairment in individuals with depression.

The Effect of Training on Participant Adherence With a Reporting Time Frame for Momentary Subjective Experiences in Ecological Momentary Assessment: Cognitive Interview Study.

Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has the potential to minimize recall bias by having people report on their experiences in the moment (momentary model) or over short periods (coverage model). This potential hinges on the assumption that participants provide their ratings based on the reporting time frame instructions prescribed in the EMA items. However, it is unclear what time frames participants actually use when answering the EMA questions and whether participant training improves participants' adherence to the reporting instructions.

Achieving reliable pain change scores for individuals in the postoperative phase: carefully choose sampling density, test length, and administration mode.

Despite tremendous efforts to increase the reliability of pain measures and other self-report instruments, improving or even evaluating the reliability of change scores has been largely neglected. In this study, we investigate the ability of 2 instruments from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System, pain interference (6 items) and pain behavior (7 items), to reliably detect individual changes in pain during the postsurgical period of a hernia repair in 98 patients who answered daily diaries over almost 3 weeks after surgery. To identify the most efficient strategy for obtaining sufficiently reliable estimates of change (reliability >0.