Impact of Providing a Personalized Data Dashboard on Ecological Momentary Assessment Compliance among College Students Who Use Substances: A Pilot Micro-randomized Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The landscape of substance use behavior among young adults has observed rapid changes across time. Intensive longitudinal designs are ideal for examining and intervening on substance use behavior in real-time but rely on high participant compliance in study protocol, representing a significant challenge for researchers. OBJECTIVE The current study evaluated the effect of including a personalized data dashboard (DD) in a text-based survey prompt on study compliance outcomes among college students participating in a 21-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study. METHODS Participants (N=91; 67% female, 92% White) were college students who engaged in recent alcohol and cannabis use. Participants were randomized to either complete a 21-day EMA protocol with 4 prompts/day (EMA Group) or complete the same EMA protocol with one personalized message and a DD indicating multiple metrics of progress in the study, delivered at one randomly selected prompt/day (EMA+DD Group) via a micro-randomized design. Study compliance, completion time, self-reported protocol experiences, and qualitative responses were assessed for both groups. RESULTS Levels of compliance were similar across groups. Participants in the EMA+DD Group had overall faster completion times, with significant week-level differences in weeks 2 and 3 of the study. The EMA+DD Group was marginally more likely to perceive the compensation level to be adequate and the protocol as less burdensome. Qualitative findings revealed EMA+DD participants perceived that seeing their progress facilitated engagement. Within the EMA+DD Group, providing a DD at the moment-level did not significantly impact participants’ likelihood of completing the EMA or completion time at that particular prompt, with the exception of the first prompt of the day CONCLUSIONS Providing a DD may be useful to increase engagement, particularly for researchers aiming to assess health behaviors shortly after a survey prompt is deployed to participants’ mobile devices.