Experience sampling
Sample current experience in real settings
Experience sampling repeatedly prompts participants to report current or very recent experience during everyday life. Ecological momentary assessment is a closely overlapping term used particularly in health research and may include behaviour and sensor measures. Signal-, time- and event-contingent schedules answer different questions. Sampling occasions and people are separate design decisions with separate sources of bias.
Use for momentary affect, attention or behaviour when retrospective summaries are inadequate. Participants need a reliable prompting device, and the study needs a realistic compliance plan and repeated-measures analysis.
Strengths
- Measures states near the moment of occurrence
- Links experiences to everyday contexts
Limitations
- Prompt non-response can be informative
- Frequent measurement increases burden and reactivity
Know the boundary
Momentary temporal ordering strengthens process description but does not by itself prove causation.