Background
Mobile data collection with smartphones—which belongs to the methodological family
of ambulatory assessment, ecological momentary assessment, and experience sampling—is
a method for assessing and tracking people's ongoing thoughts, feelings, behaviors,
or physiological processes in daily life using a smartphone (Mehl and Conner, 2012;
Miller, 2012; Trull and Ebner-Priemer, 2013; Harari et al., 2016). The primary goal
of this method is to collect in-the-moment or close-to-the-moment active data (i.e.,
subjective self-reports) and/or passive data (e.g., data collected from smartphone
sensors) directly from people in their daily lives. The collection and assessment
of such data is possible because smartphones are widely available and come with the
computational power and sensors needed to obtain information about their owners' daily
lives. Researchers in the fields of social science (e.g., Raento et al., 2009), psychology
(e.g., Miller, 2012; Harari et al., 2016), and neuroscience (e.g., Schlee et al.,
2016; Ladouce et al., 2017) use smartphones to collect data about personality processes
and dynamics (Allemand and Mehl, 2017; Beierle et al., 2018a; Stieger et al., 2018;
Zimmermann et al., 2018), daily cognitive behaviors (Aschwanden et al., 2018), social
support behaviors (Scholz et al., 2016), momentary thoughts (Demiray et al., 2017),
couple interactions (Horn et al., 2018), physical activity (Gruenenfelder-Steiger
et al., 2017), and moods and emotions (Erbas et al., 2018).
Using smartphones for data collection provides a snapshot of individuals' everyday
perceptions, experiences, and interactions with their environments. The use of mobile
devices for the assessment of individuals' daily lives is not a new research method
(e.g., Fahrenberg et al., 1996). However, because smartphones have now become so widespread
throughout the population, are low in cost, and are equipped with sensor technology
and ready for data collection through apps (Miller, 2012; Cartwright, 2016; Harari
et al., 2016; Beierle et al., 2018a), we are now living in an interesting time for
smart mobile data collection. Despite much progress, based on our experiences and
discussions with experts in the field, we see the potential for further development
of this method.
Smart Mobile Data Collection
Mobile data collection with smartphones is growing rapidly in popularity due to its
many advantages. One such advantage is that the findings are ecologically valid because
they are collected during people's day-to-day lives and capture behaviors and experiences
in real environments outside of research laboratories (Wrzus and Mehl, 2015). Real-time
reports (i.e., active data) and sensor data (i.e., passive data) are measured in the
moment and are therefore less prone to memory bias than are retrospective assessments
(Redelmeier and Kahneman, 1996). By capturing real-time data about when and where
an action takes place, the method provides important information about the dynamics
of real-life patterns (Hektner et al., 2007). A smartphone allows researchers to capture
such data by installing random, continuous, or event-based alarms to ask participants
for their responses to questions or events during the day. Intensive repeated measurements
of one participant capture within-person information, which represents the behaviors
and experiences of a single individual. In contrast, between-person information demonstrates
variability between individuals. Collecting within-person information allows for the
study of the mechanisms and processes that underlie behavior, and this can be contrary
to between-person information (Hamaker, 2012). For example, a study by Stawski et
al. (2013) showed that processing speed is important for understanding between-person
differences in working memory, whereas attention switching is of greater importance
to within-person variations. Therefore, it can be argued that the proper study of
the dynamic nature of psychological processes requires repeated observations within
individuals (Conner et al., 2009). Smartphones are ideal tools for collecting such
data.
Real-life data measurements are also rich in contextual information, as mobile data
collection allows for the combination of self-reports or observer-reports (i.e., active
data) and objective assessments (i.e., passive data) of activities, movements, social
interactions, bodily functions, and biological markers, using the sensors that are
built into smartphones (Ebner-Priemer et al., 2013). For example, it is possible to
collect self-reports (e.g., individuals' feelings of social inclusion) and simultaneously
to record acoustic sound clips of conversation to collect the objective patterns of
participants' actual proximity to and interaction with others (e.g., Mehl et al.,
2001).
Finally, as measurement devices, smartphones are both powerful and widespread in the
population. This enables data analysis in real time and the opportunity to run machine
learning approaches within the devices, allowing for large, individualized, dynamic,
and intensive real-life studies (Raento et al., 2009; Bleidorn and Hopwood, 2018).
Because most participants already have their own smartphones, an app is the only thing
they need to install to participate in a study (Miller, 2012). This gives researchers
the opportunity to conduct studies with large samples (Dufau et al., 2011).
Smarter Mobile Data Collection in the Future
In our research, we identified some of the challenges accompanying mobile data collection
with smartphones. In addition to discerning six challenging areas, we offer some suggestions
for dealing with these challenges in the future. The first challenge relates to collecting
data in real-life environments. Collecting smart data in daily life may result in
the validation of existing theories, some of which may relate to behaviors and phenomena
outside the realm of day-to-day life. However, this requires that researchers develop
theories that reflect the multiple factors and dynamics of the real-life context that
may influence the individual. Additionally, real-life data should not be collected
simply because it is possible to do so, with conclusions about the theoretical significance
of the data being drawn afterwards. Instead, we should develop and discuss the potential
of real-life theories that consider both the within-person and between-person effects
and the real-life context.
The second challenging area relates to real-time measurements. In data collection,
real-time also means right on time; in other words, researchers have to carefully
determine whether they are collecting data about the most relevant variables at the
most appropriate moments and at ideal time intervals. To do so, they must first know
when to collect data and when behaviors, thoughts, or changes are likely to occur.
This question is crucial in mobile data collection, because conclusions about fluctuations,
variability, and dynamics need to stem from a sound theoretical rationale or from
the behavior patterns of the target participant (e.g., Wright and Hopwood, 2016).
For instance, smartphone sensor technology and machine learning can help researchers
by detecting the time points of events within a participant, by learning when events
normally occur, or by learning the dependency of other subjective or objective variables
upon events (e.g., Albert et al., 2012).
The third challenging area concerns within-person data. Typical smartphone studies
collect data with great fidelity and generate large quantities of observations, placing
the approach clearly within the domain of “big data” and requiring its associated
advanced analytic techniques (Yarkoni, 2012; Fan et al., 2014). Working with big data
requires highly technical expertise that researchers outside the field of computational
science do not normally have. Resources must be organized, and after collecting the
data, skills in advanced statistical analyses, including longitudinal structural equation
modeling (Little, 2013), dynamic structural equation modeling (Asparouhov et al.,
2017), multilevel modeling (Bolger and Laurenceau, 2013), and machine learning (e.g.,
Bleidorn and Hopwood, 2018), are required. As a result, an interdisciplinary research
approach involving researchers interested in collecting data with smartphones and
experts familiar with those forms of data collection, management, and analysis is
crucial. Such endeavors should be supported by funding organizations and academic
career programs, enabling the full potential of mobile data collection with smartphones
to be achieved.
As a fourth challenging area, we identify the contextual information that can be collected
with smartphone sensor data (i.e., passive data), as researchers have to consider
the different forms, intervals, and amounts of sensor data (e.g., GPS data, app use,
and accelerometer data). When collecting passive data continuously over multiple days,
researchers need to consider more than just the data itself; they must also be able
to interpret what the measurements indicate and convert the data into psychologically
meaningful variables, such as sociability or mobility patterns (e.g., Mehl et al.,
2006; Harari et al., 2016). Although this task is fundamental to the research, it
often requires new skills of researchers and new approaches within the technology—approaches
that ideally automatically aggregate passive smartphone-sensor-based data. For example,
when collecting sound files containing conversation, it would be very helpful to automatically
detect the spoken words of a target person (e.g., Mehl et al., 2001), detect contextual
information (e.g., Lu et al., 2012), or interpret GPS data in terms of mobility patterns
(e.g., Ryder et al., 2009). For such requirements, preliminary solutions do exist
(e.g., Barry et al., 2006; White et al., 2011), but much more development and validation
work is needed before we can achieve automatic, preprocessed, and validated smartphone-sensor
data that can be combined with other types of data collection.
The fifth challenging area relates to the smartphone device itself. Mobile data collection
with smartphones requires more technical preparation and greater technical confidence
and skills, on the side of both the researcher and participant, than is required in
classic paper-and-pencil studies. Daily technical hassles such as malfunctioning software
and hardware, low smartphone batteries, and operation systems crashing during ongoing
studies cost time and resources. Therefore, we highly recommend including an explicit
time buffer and anticipating a higher than usual drop-out rate in smartphone studies
to compensate for potential technical problems and challenges (for more information
on technical issues, please see Mehl and Conner, 2012; Miller, 2012; Harari et al.,
2016). Although the technical side of mobile data collection with smartphones is likely
to become more reliable over time, more validation studies are required in this area
and more ready-made valid apps are needed. When using smartphones for data collection
within specific population groups, it is also important to consider the unique needs
of the target group. For example, when working with older adults, it can be helpful
to reflect participants' potential lack of smartphone skills by adapting briefings
on smartphone/app use (Seifert et al., 2017).
The final, though certainly not least important, challenging area is that of data
security and ethical issues. Collecting mobile data has revived past concerns about
data protection and the ethical use of data. Using mobile devices for data collection,
including tracking behavior and lifestyle patterns, introduces a unique dimension
to individual participant protection. When collecting intensive profiles of individuals,
which is the main research method within mobile data collection with smartphones,
anonymization is nearly impossible. Therefore, traceable real-life data requires an
intensive consideration of ethical and legal approval, the safeguarding of participant
privacy, and the establishment of data security and data privacy (Harari et al., 2016;
Marelli and Testa, 2018). As an example, Beierle et al. (2018b) conceived a privacy
model for mobile data collection apps. Zook et al. (2017) present ten simple rules
for responsible big data research, concluding that ethical and data protection issues
should not prevent research but that it is vital to ensure “that the work is sound,
accurate, and maximizes the good while minimizing harm” (Zook et al., 2017, p. 8).
When using participants' own smartphones, it is also important that researchers acquire
participants' consent to share self-recorded data with researchers (Gustarini et al.,
2016). In a quantitative population survey among persons over 50 years of age, Seifert
et al. (2018) found that more than the half of this demographic group is willing to
share self-recorded data with researchers, regardless of participants' age, gender,
education, technology affinity, or perceived health. The sharing and use of participants'
own self-recorded data may require new models of participant involvement, with the
goal of creating a trusted relationship between the data providers and researchers
working with the data (Beierle et al., 2018b; Seifert et al., 2018).
Conclusions
Mobile data collection with smartphones offers unique and innovative opportunities
for studying human beings and processes in real life and real time. This approach
offers researchers the opportunity to collect real-time reports of participants in
their natural environment and within their individual dynamics and life contexts with
the help of a regular smartphone. However, the approach also brings many challenges
that provide interesting avenues for future developments. To date, mobile data collection
with smartphones is already very smart, but we see the potential for even smarter
mobile data collection in the future.
Author Contributions
All authors worked on this paper from conception to final approval and share the same
opinion.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial
or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The handling editor declared a past co-authorship with the authors.