Transitions and Resilience in Ecological Momentary Assessment: a multiple single-case study

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of affect, cognition and behavior aims to provide a ‘window into a person’s daily life’. But what should we look for through this window? In this paper, we compare a statistical perspective, grounded in probability theory, with a complex systems perspective on two common phenomena in EMA data: non-stationarity and outlying values. From a statistical perspective, these phenomena are considered nuisance that should be dealt with. From a complex systems perspective, in contrast, non-stationarity may signal transitions from one dynamic pattern to another (e.g. a transition from a neutral to a persistent sad mood), whereas outlying values may signal recovery from perturbations (e.g., stressful life events). We evaluated the complex systems view with an analysis of multiple single cases that took part in the Track your Mood EMA study, where participants reported on their emotions and contextual events for 60 days. Our findings show that non-stationarity was related to a meaningful transition and outlying values were related to recovery after perturbations. These findings show that person-oriented EMA research would benefit from broadening its scope beyond the statistical approach and also use complex systems theory to identify meaningful and clinically relevant phenomena that are otherwise at risk of being missed. Complementing time series with contextual information and qualitative data will be essential to genuinely understand these data patterns.