EMA sounds fancy, but it's not rocket science. It's just a cool term for beating or testing yourself to be healthier I guess, by catching yourself in real-time as you do any of the things you do.  The topic speaks about smart research.  That study decided to check how good people were at tracking their physical activities and eating habits using technology. The study recruited a bunch of people totally 54 people with an average age of 31 and a majority of them being women. These people got a set of digital devices hooked up to their everyday life for 9 days.  This was testing the effectiveness of EMA in a real-world setting.

They collected information multiple times a day, including when a person was just walking or chilling.  The people also fired off reports whenever they felt like it, without being prompted.   Plus, all were expected while other were prompted to fill out questions with up to 17 questions about their exercise and what they ate and what their mood was among other things. The findings tell us a lot about what is happening to people and what they are eating. So, let us look at the findings.

Information from the post-EMA interviews revealed challenges. People struggled because they were sometimes inconvenienced by the schedule of the study, at times they had to deal with technical issues, and obviously they were distracted in these times. The initial questions and targets were not always user-friendly.  This was important for the study.  The study found out that people were more likely to complete their own reports of when they ate, even if they were not prompted to do so in the EMA surveys.

The success of this study depended on the study being able to figure out the best way to trigger people to report. Researchers  were able to find out the best average to prompt people to report in different settings using the Fitbit, they found the best times to do so.  The study highlighted the need for more pre-testing.   Future studies should pre-test their protocol on a small scale to improve the quality of data collected.

EMA studies involve asking people about their activities multiple times a day, like when they are walking.  The study involved  people using the Fitbit to tell them when to do a report.  The study found that it is important to understand the best methods to get the most accurate information from people.  The number of reports was not always as desired, event surveys were only completed about 34% of the time. The information from Fitbit data was used to make the study more efficient in the future.

In the future there needs to be more planning. EmA is pretty cool and used in a lot of major studies. It is clear that EmA studies need to figure out the best way to do this. Research about EmA research is important to make sure the results of studies are useful. There are other studies that will help make EmA useful in the future.

EMA: You Don't Have To Be A Superhero To Track Healthy Habits

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