Ambulatory Assessment
Current psychological research mainly focuses on questionnaires or laboratory studies (Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007). Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. While questionnaires have proven criterion and conceptual validity for capturing salient personality trait and state variance, they fall short of such validity when variations of actual behavior in real-life settings are sought. Recent criticism of such a questionnaire approach emphasized undue reliance on memory processes that are open to distortions or biases (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). On the other hand, behavior under a controlled laboratory setting may prove unrepresentative if this condition does not match real-life situation characteristics (Fahrenberg, Myrtek, Pawlik, & Perrez, 2007). Both methodologies appear to lack ecological validity. Ambulatory assessment methodology has the potential to resolve some of these problems, by investigating self-report, physiology, or behavior in (nearly) real-time in everyday life. Furthermore, ambulatory assessment can help to validate questionnaires and laboratory findings by examining their generalizability to actual behavior in everyday life. According to the definition of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment – Understanding Behavior in Context (SAA), ambulatory assessment comprises the use of in-field methods to assess the ongoing behavior, physiology, experience, and environmental aspects of humans or nonhuman primates in naturalistic or unconstrained settings. Ambulatory assessment designates an ecologically relevant assessment perspective that aims at understanding biopsychosocial processes as they naturally unfold in time and in context (see www.ambulatory-assessment.org).
Recently ambulatory assessment, which is not yet a mainstream approach in psychology, has also gained increasing interest in the United States, evidenced by top-tier publications (Kahneman et al., 2004; Mehl, Vazire, Ramirez-Esparza, Slatcher, & Pennebaker, 2007). Even though ambulatory assessment may now seem even more popular in the US than in Europe, many of the basic technical developments and research contributions were made nearly 20 years ago in European countries. In the following we will give four examples of seminal work in this field.
Pawlik and Buse (1982) critically investigated the interaction paradigm of personality research. Rather than assessing personality-situation interactions through questionnaires, they collected actual in-field data on their subjects’ behavior and mood states using electronic devices (similar to today’s palmtops). Following a time-sampling design that ensured that situations and settings would be picked randomly (rather than quasi-orthogonalized as in questionnaire studies), their findings revealed that substantial interaction terms found in questionnaire data are specific to this type of assessment and cannot be confirmed in ambulatory assessment data. Mental representations of how one behaves (or may behave) in different situations give rise to significant personality-situation interactions, whereas ambulatory data follow a straight linear-additive model.
Fahrenberg, Foerster, Schneider, Mueller, and Myrtek (1984) started more then 20 years ago with their first laboratory-field study. This investigation used multichannel recording equipment (digital preprocessing, analog recorder) and investigated individual differences in psychological and physiological activation patterns to various laboratory stressors as well as in everyday life in a repeated measurement design (3 weeks, 3 months, 1 year). The generalizability of laboratory findings to equivalent settings in everyday life is still a basic issue.
Perrez and Reicherts (1992) were interested in analyzing functional adaptation (coping) as matching subjective perception with objective relevant features of the situation and as matching adaptive response with objective demands of the situation. Therefore, they developed a computer-assisted self-monitoring system (COMES) to assess stressful situations and their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response patterns in daily life, which enabled Perrez and Reicherts to record process aspects of coping behavior in real-time without retrospective distortion. In order to assess daily life interpersonal emotion regulation in families with adolescents, they later devised a computer-assisted self-monitoring system. A random time-sampling plan allowed recording feelings, emotional states, and interpersonal coping responses simultaneously (Perrez, Schoebi, & Wilhelm, 2000).
Another early pioneer of ambulatory assessment, or, in his words, experience sampling (ESM), was Martin W. de Vries from the University of Limburg (The Netherlands). In his editorial in the first special issue on ambulatory assessment (deVries, 1987), he highlights the advantages of ESM including: describing the person in context and overcoming the shortcomings of previous research strategies, such as reliance on retrospective recall and failure to take the variability of mental states more fully into account.
As ambulatory assessment had recently progressed into many new areas of scientific research in psychology and medicine, the methodology has also become more elaborate. For instance, a special issue of the European Journal of Psychological Assessment edited by Hans Westmeyer (2007) was devoted to the advances in the methodology of ambulatory assessment (Ebner-Priemer & Kubiak, 2007; Ebner-Priemer & Sawitzki, 2007; Kubiak & Jonas, 2007; Mehl & Holleran, 2007; Reicherts, Salamin, Maggiori, & Pauls, 2007; Wilhelm & Schoebi, 2007). However, reviews summarizing the specific contributions of ambulatory assessment in various psychological disciplines are still lacking. In this special section, experts in the field of ambulatory assessment review the progress in their specialized disciplines: in developmental psychology, clinical psychology, work and organizational psychology, and biological psychology. An additional paper is dedicated to ambulatory activity monitoring, which is an approach to objectively assess actual behavior in everyday life; a widely neglected research topic in psychology (Baumeister et al., 2007), but currently strongly encouraged by the Decade of Behavior (American Psychological Association).
Hoppman and Riediger (2009) review four current research themes in developmental ambulatory-assessment research employing electronic devices as assessment instruments: (a) affective-motivational development, (b) social contexts of development, (c) age-related challenges and everyday functioning, and (d) cognitive development. Overall, the reviewed research demonstrates that ambulatory assessment complements traditional developmental study designs and laboratory assessments in important ways.
Ebner-Priemer and Trull (2009) discuss the main features and advantages of ambulatory assessment taking prototypic examples from the literature in clinical psychology and psychiatry: (a) the use of real-time assessment to circumvent biased recollection, (b) assessment in real life to enhance generalizability, (c) repeated assessment to investigate within-person processes, (d) multimodal assessment, including psychological, physiological, and behavioral data, (e) the opportunity to assess and investigate context-specific relationships, and (f) the possibility of giving feedback in real-time.
Klumb, Elfering, and Doerfler (2009) selected four areas illustrating the contribution of ambulatory assessment to I/O psychology: (a) work strain and coping with work stressors, (b) work-nonwork interface, (c) social interactions in the workplace, and (d) job attitudes and work-related emotions. Klumb et al. identified the greatest potential of these studies in analyses of the modulation of intraindividual processes by interindividual differences.
Houtveen and de Geus (2009) focus on the importance of a priori choices in study design and data-analysis strategies when ambulatory recording specifically targets the reciprocal relationship between physiological and psychological events, illustrated with ambulatory-assessed indices of the cardiac autonomic nervous system, respiration, and cortisol secretion.
Bussman, Ebner-Priemer, and Fahrenberg (2009) introduce recent developments in ambulatory monitoring of activity and motion patterns. They elucidate the discrepancies between objective and subjective reports of activity, and outline recent methodological developments. In demonstrating recent applications, Bussmann et al. show that ambulatory activity monitoring, especially in combination with the simultaneous assessment of emotions, mood, or physiological variables is a promising approach for psychology, which is suited for explaining behavior in context.
Ulrich Ebner-Priemer is interim Professor at the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Karlsruhe, Germany. His research focuses on ambulatory monitoring and assessment of physiological, behavioral, and psychological symptoms in everyday life.
Thomas Kubiak is a research fellow at the Institute of Psychology, Department of Personality Psychology/Psychological Assessment, University of Greifswald, Germany. His research interests include ambulatory assessment in behavioral medicine, personality psychology, interoceptive processes in chronically ill patients, and monitoring of metabolic parameters.
Kurt Pawlik is Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany. His areas of specialization include differential psychology and psychological assessment, experimental and clinical neuropsychology, methodology and history of psychology, and environmental and international psychology. He was founding Editor of the European Psychologist.
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