Ecological momentary assessment: what it is and why it is a method of the future in clinical psychopharmacology.

Current methods of assessment in clinical psychopharmacology have several serious disadvantages, particularly for the study of social functioning. We aimed to review the strengths and weaknesses of current methods used in clinical psychopharmacology and to compare them with a group of methods, developed by personality/social psychologists, termed ecological momentary assessment (EMA), which permit the research participant to report on symptoms, affect and behaviour close in time to experience and which sample many events or time periods. EMA has a number of advantages over more traditional methods for the assessment of patients in clinical psychopharmacological studies. It can both complement and, in part, replace existing methods. EMA methods will permit more sensitive assessments and will enable more wide-ranging and detailed measurements of mood and behaviour. These types of methods should be adopted more widely by clinical psychopharmacology researchers.

[1]  S. Kashikar-Zuck,et al.  Everyday life with osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis: independent effects of disease and gender on daily pain, mood, and coping , 1999, PAIN®.

[2]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  On the dynamic covariation between interpersonal behavior and affect: prediction from neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Statistical approaches to the correction of correlational bias , 1980 .

[4]  N. Bolger,et al.  Diary methods: capturing life as it is lived. , 2003, Annual review of psychology.

[5]  R. Dawes,et al.  Heuristics and Biases: Clinical versus Actuarial Judgment , 2002 .

[6]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Validity comparison of behavior counts and ratings by knowledgeable informants. , 1982 .

[7]  N. Nicolson,et al.  Effects of antidepressant treatment on the quality of daily life: an experience sampling study. , 2002, The Journal of clinical psychiatry.

[8]  A. Stone,et al.  The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers , 2001 .

[9]  Debbie S. Moskowitz,et al.  Convergence of self-reports and independent observers : dominance and friendliness , 1990 .

[10]  Seymour Epstein,et al.  The stability of behavior: I. On predicting most of the people much of the time. , 1979 .

[11]  J. Smyth,et al.  The use of ecological momentary assessment approaches in eating disorder research. , 2001, International Journal of Eating Disorders.

[12]  Personality and personality disorders. , 1994, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[13]  L. Wheeler,et al.  Self‐Recording of Everyday Life Events: Origins, Types, and Uses , 1991 .

[14]  S. Armeli,et al.  Multilevel daily process designs for consulting and clinical psychology: a preface for the perplexed. , 1999, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[15]  S. Shiffman,et al.  Ecological Momentary Assessment (Ema) in Behavioral Medicine , 1994 .

[16]  Johannes Berkhof,et al.  Cortisol Responses to Daily Events in Major Depressive Disorder , 2003, Psychosomatic medicine.

[17]  R. Schachar,et al.  Agreement between teachers' ratings and observations of hyperactivity, inattentiveness, and defiance , 1986, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[18]  J. Hughes,et al.  Marijuana abstinence effects in marijuana smokers maintained in their home environment. , 2001, Archives of general psychiatry.

[19]  D. Moskowitz.  Comparison of self-reports, reports by knowledgeable informants, and behavioral observation data , 1986 .

[20]  R. Dahl,et al.  Measuring mood and complex behavior in natural environments: use of ecological momentary assessment in pediatric affective disorders. , 2003, Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology.

[21]  W. Shadish,et al.  Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference , 2001 .

[22]  Michael Eid,et al.  Intraindividual variability in affect : Reliability, validity, and personality correlates , 1999 .

[23]  Judith D. Singer,et al.  Fitting individual growth models using SAS PROC MIXED. , 2002 .

[24]  D. Beidel,et al.  Some further comments on the measurement of social phobia. , 1988, Behaviour research and therapy.

[25]  D. Rosenhan.  On being sane in insane places , 1973, Science.

[26]  B. Waite,et al.  Serum Cholesterol Concentrations and Mood States in Violent Psychiatric Patients: An Experience Sampling Study , 2000, Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

[27]  G. Affleck,et al.  The relationship of daily mood and stressful events to symptoms in juvenile rheumatic disease. , 2000, Arthritis care and research : the official journal of the Arthritis Health Professions Association.

[28]  W. Tse,et al.  Serotonergic intervention affects both social dominance and affiliative behaviour , 2002, Psychopharmacology.

[29]  D. Zuroff,et al.  Assessing interpersonal perceptions using the interpersonal grid. , 2005, Psychological assessment.

[30]  M. Weissman,et al.  Assessment of social adjustment by patient self-report. , 1976, Archives of general psychiatry.

[31]  R. Larsen,et al.  Individual differences in entrainment of mood to the weekly calendar. , 1990, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[32]  D S Kosson,et al.  Passive avoidance learning in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders. , 1986, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[33]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Does Unhappiness Make You Sick? the Role of Affect and Neuroticism in the Experience of Common Physical Symptoms Affective State and Physical Symptoms , 2022 .

[34]  J. Berkhof,et al.  Quality of life in depression: daily life determinants and variability , 1999, Psychiatry Research.

[35]  R. Pihl,et al.  Assessment of measures of impulsivity in healthy male volunteers , 1995 .

[36]  Deborah C. Beidel,et al.  The feasibility and validity of a daily diary for the assessment of anxiety in children , 1991 .

[37]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Risk for hypertension and diminished pain sensitivity in women: autonomic and daily correlates. , 1999, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[38]  D. Moskowitz.  Cross-situational generality and the interpersonal circumplex. , 1994 .

[39]  R. Larsen.  Neuroticism and selective encoding and recall of symptoms: evidence from a combined concurrent-retrospective study. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[40]  R. Delfino,et al.  The ADHD spectrum and everyday life: experience sampling of adolescent moods, activities, smoking, and drinking. , 2002, Child development.

[41]  Seymour Epstein,et al.  The stability of behavior: II. Implications for psychological research. , 1980 .

[42]  R. Rapee.  Descriptive psychopathology of social phobia. , 1995 .

[43]  A. G. Baker,et al.  Effects of reward and response costs on inhibition in ADHD children. , 1995, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[44]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Do interpersonal traits predict affect? A comparison of three models. , 1995 .

[45]  L. Alden,et al.  An interpersonal analysis of social anxiety and depression , 1990, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[46]  K. Stein,et al.  Affect instability in adults with a borderline personality disorder. , 1996, Archives of psychiatric nursing.

[47]  S. Armeli,et al.  Does affect mediate the association between daily events and alcohol use? , 2000, Journal of studies on alcohol.

[48]  L. Hirsch.  Competing interests: none declared. , 2006 .

[49]  E. Diener,et al.  The personality structure of affect. , 1995 .

[50]  D. Zuroff,et al.  The Effect of Tryptophan on Social Interaction in Everyday Life: A Placebo-Controlled Study , 2001, Neuropsychopharmacology.

[51]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Situational influences on gender differences in agency and communion. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[52]  M. Hamilton,et al.  Rating depressive patients. , 1980, The Journal of clinical psychiatry.

[53]  Philippe Delespaul,et al.  Determinants of occurrence and recovery from hallucinations in daily life , 2002, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

[54]  D. Moskowitz,et al.  Dynamic stability of behavior: the rhythms of our interpersonal lives. , 1998, Journal of personality.

[55]  D. Zuroff,et al.  Flux, pulse, and spin: dynamic additions to the personality lexicon. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[56]  A. Dubini,et al.  Do noradrenaline and serotonin differentially affect social motivation and behaviour? , 1997, European Neuropsychopharmacology.

[57]  H. Steiger,et al.  Hypersensitivity to social interactions in bulimic syndromes: relationship to binge eating. , 1999, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[58]  J. Os,et al.  Emotional reactivity to daily life stress in psychosis. , 2001, Archives of general psychiatry.

[59]  E. Diener,et al.  The independence of positive and negative affect. , 1984, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[60]  R. Larson.  Beeping children and adolescents: A method for studying time use and daily experience , 1989, Journal of youth and adolescence.

[61]  I. Eardley,et al.  Efficacy and safety of sildenafil citrate in the treatment of men with mild to moderate erectile dysfunction. , 2001, The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science.

[62]  Jan de Leeuw,et al.  Introducing Multilevel Modeling , 1998 .

[63]  Joshua M. Smyth,et al.  Daily Mood Variability: Form of Diurnal Patterns and Determinants of Diurnal Patterns , 1996 .

[64]  S. Nichols,et al.  Passive avoidance in psychopaths: The effects of reward. , 1990 .