Intensive Longitudinal Methods

Community Mentors

Peter ten Klooster
This community is guided by Peter ten Klooster. For additional details on joining, meeting schedules, and any other inquiries, please reach out to them directly.

Intensive Longitudinal Methods (ILMs) allow to study people’s thoughts, behaviours, feelings and physiology as they occur in real daily life using either diaries, mobile apps and/or (wearable) sensors​. Measurements can be both active (self-reports) or passive (e.g., acoustic sampling, GPS, actigraph, HR).

ILMs are referred to by different names, including experience sampling, ecological momentary assessment, ambulatory assessment, real-time data capture. What all ILMs have in common is intensive repeated (or even continuous) measurement of a set of variables over several days, weeks, or even months.

Advantages of ILMs over traditional observational surveys or lab studies​ can be:

  • More realistic conditions (real-time and real-life)​
  • More precise and less biased measurement (no recollection bias)​
  • Insight into the relevance of fluctuations in variables and (changes in) context​
  • Within-person (micro-level) processes​
  • Temporal nature of associations​

​ILMs are increasingly feasible and popular in research due to the fast developments in and penetration of smartphones and wearables.

Increasing number of papers mentioning ILMs
Increasing number of papers mentioning ILMs