Making trauma ecological momentary assessment studies FAIR: review of design considerations and data procedures
Year: 2025
Type: review
Abstract: Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) involves collecting data from people in their everyday lives one or more times per day over the course of days, weeks, or months. EMA has been used in the traumatic stress field to better understand how trauma-relevant symptoms, experiences, and behaviours occur under naturalistic conditions and in relation to one another. The FAIR principles specify that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable to maximise the knowledge gained from individual research studies. However, it is unclear how EMA design decisions and data procedures might affect the implementation of these principles.Objective: We articulate key design considerations and data procedures when performing trauma EMA research and outline some challenges and recommendations for implementing the FAIR data principles in trauma EMA research.Method and Results: Using examples from existing trauma EMA studies, we discuss the decisions made when preparing a trauma EMA study; data processing and analytic procedures performed following data collection; and challenges that exist for their implementation, as well as practices that trauma EMA researchers can incorporate into their research to promote FAIR data.Conclusions: Implementing the FAIR data principles in trauma EMA research is critical to advancing scientific knowledge. Researchers should deposit their data in reputable repositories and include documentation detailing design decisions and the steps taken to clean and prepare data. Many challenges remain for the implementation of these practices including balancing privacy concerns and efforts to make trauma EMA data readily shareable.
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,704
Funders: National Science Foundation, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Office of Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
Awards: G1742148326, Examining Neighborhood Profiles Defined by Place-Based Community Features and their Relationships with Firearm Violence Disparities, An in-depth Examination of the Psychological Processes involved in the Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain after a Traumatic Musculoskeletal Injury, RII Track-1: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Vermont: The Science of Online Corpora, Knowledge, and Stories (SOCKS), G8986925416, Digital Phenotyping of Anxiety and Anxiety-Related Alcohol Comorbidity and Treatment
OpenAlex ID: W4408694861