Ecological Momentary Assessment extensions 3 (EMAX3) Proposal: An app for EMA-type research

Smartphones present unique data collection opportunities for research. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies have been conducted using smartphones in many areas, as participant responses can be collected at the same time as device sensor data. We wanted to study undergraduate mental health using smartphones while investigating data from as many smartphone sensors as possible. The app used for this had to be accessible from the standard app stores to use existing participant phones. The software also had to have an easy setup process at the server-side due to limited resources. As a result, we developed the Ecological Momentary Assessment eXtensions platform. We describe the platform, two studies that used Version 2 of it, and summarize data collection results. We then outline a pathway to a unified EMAX3 app. To the best of our knowledge, EMAX is the only platform developed and used for sensor-based EMA research at a Canadian university.