A Systematic Review of Momentary Assessment Designs for Mood and Anxiety Symptoms

Background: Altering components of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) measures to better suit the purposes of individual studies is a common and oftentimes necessary step. Though the inherent flexibility in EMA has its benefits, no resource exists to provide an overview of the variability in how convergent constructs and symptoms have been assessed in the past. The present study fills that gap by examining EMA measurement design for mood and anxiety symptomatology. Methods: Various search engines were used to identify 234 relevant studies. Items administered, data collection schedules (i.e., beeps per day), response scales (i.e., Likert), data collection platforms (i.e., apps), and psychometric properties (i.e., reliability) were extracted. Results: Study designs varied greatly in all aspects across the identified papers. Over 4,600 extracted items were qualitatively analyzed, resulting in the identification of 12 themes. The most EMA items focused on affect, with categories such as happiness and tension appearing most frequently. We provide all of our data extraction in the format of an open-source database. Limitations: Despite our best attempts to include as much of the relevant literature as possible, this review and the accompanying database are not exhaustive, but can easily be built upon to include other, newer studies. Conclusions: The fact that the affect theme featured both positive and negative emotional constructs highlights the dichotomous focus on valence and affect within the literature surrounding anxious and depressive symptomatology. We hope that our database will act as a helpful design decision-making resource for researchers studying this kind of symptomatology in the future. Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO (CRD42019139409).

Automated summary

This study aimed to fill the gap in research on EMA measurement design for mood and anxiety symptomatology, highlighting the significant variability in EMA measurement items and the importance of affect themes in research design.