An Investigation of the Temporal Dynamics of Careless Responding Across Different Populations in Experience Sampling Data

The experience sampling method (ESM) has become a popular tool in psychology. However, the intensive nature of ESM raises concerns about careless responding, where participants respond without paying sufficient attention. This study investigated the temporal dynamics of carelessness across three common sample types (community, student, clinical). We leveraged four careless responding indicators—response time, within-beep standard deviation, an inconsistency index, and occasion-person correlation—and used univariate and multivariate multilevel models to examine their temporal trajectories. Our results demonstrate that careless responding is not a stable phenomenon but changes over time, with evidence for increases across days and non-stationarity within days across the different samples. The presence of few and small associations among the indicators implies either that they flag distinct kinds of carelessness or that some of them do not capture carelessness at all. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of considering the temporal dynamics of carelessness in ESM studies.