What is it about?
This study found that the time people take to answer real-time smartphone survey questions (ecological momentary assessments) can provide useful information about their processing speed. These response times may help researchers measure both average processing speed and moment-to-moment changes without adding extra cognitive tests.
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Why is it important?
Real-time smartphone surveys are increasingly used to study people's everyday experiences, but adding repeated cognitive tests can increase participant burden. This study suggests that response times to ecological momentary assessment (EMA) questions may provide a simple, passive way to estimate processing speed throughout daily life, when scores from formal mobile cognitive tests are not available.
Perspectives
This work is an example of our paradata group's belief that, beyond what people respond to surveys, how they respond can yield additional information about individuals such as insights on their mental health, effort in responding, and cognitive performance (which was the focus here, specifically in the EMA context).
Raymond Hernandez
University of Southern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reliability and Validity of Noncognitive Ecological Momentary Assessment Survey Response Times as an Indicator of Cognitive Processing Speed in People’s Natural Environment: Intensive Longitudinal Study, JMIR mhealth and uhealth, May 2023, JMIR Publications Inc.,
DOI: 10.2196/45203.
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