Sampling Human Experience in Naturalistic Settings

The topic of subjective experience—what people subjectively think, feel, and perceive—has interested philosophers, scientists, and laypeople alike. No matter what our role, as scientist or friend, we gain access to the subjective experience of others through the questions we ask and the answers people give. In the social sciences, this interest translates into the regular use of questionnaires, wherein people typically describe how they feel or behave “in general” (e.g., “How happy are you generally?”) or how they felt or behaved in the past (e.g., “How happy were you over this past month?”). While these global and retrospective assessments serve a purpose, they fail to adequately capture the rich contextualized representations of what people actually feel and think in daily life. Such limitations, coupled with advances in technology, have led to the emergence of a newer class of procedures, collectively called experience sampling methods. These methods allow people to report on their subjective experiences in situ, as they go about their daily lives.