Novel Uses of Wearables, Sensors and Mobile Apps to Collect Health and Environmental Data in Survey Research. |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Heidi Guyer (University of Michigan Survey Research Center) |
| Coordinator 2 | Ms Carli Lessof (National Centre for Research Methods, University of South Hampton) |
Survey research is rapidly changing in part due to the proliferation of new and emerging technologies. This session will discuss the growing interest in incorporating wearables, sensors and mobile apps to collect in-depth, repeated and objective measures with a specific focus on health and environmental measures.
The use of mobile apps, sensors and wearables to collect data allows for measures that often cannot be gathered using traditional data collection methods or involve high levels of cost or burden. Wearables, sensors and apps offer the possibility of collecting data in the moment, including ecological momentary assessment, as well as offering both objective and subjective measures collected at one point in time, at several points in time, or continuously over a defined period of time. Data collected using new technology can represent various measurement levels including the individual, household, neighborhood and the general environment. Additionally, interventions can be targeted based on data derived from sensors and wearables, thereby both collecting data and providing targeted prompts over time.
Examples of wearables used to collect health data include actigraphy, fitness trackers, sleep trackers, heart rate and blood pressure monitors. Sensors are available to measure individual behaviors as well as areas of daily living including air temperature and quality, environmental noises and sound quality, and intelligent in-home equipment such as smart refrigerators which track the availability or shortage of food items. Mobile apps often take advantage of the technical capabilities of smartphones and tablets, for example cameras and GPS, in combination with the ability to deliver online surveys or trackers of health behaviors.
We invite submissions addressing the following topics:
• Novel uses of wearables, sensors and/or mobile apps
• Participation rates and response bias; compliance rates over time
• Considerations regarding providing standardized equipment versus requesting consent to link to data from devices owned by the participant (including burden, compliance, cost).
• How do objective measures from wearables and sensors compare with standard or subjective reports?
• Measurement error resulting from the type of sensor or wearable used, its location, timing or frequency of measurement or other factors
• Costs and practicalities of developing and incorporating wearables, sensors and apps in surveys
• Data issues including accessing commercial datasets, ensuring data security, managing data sharing, data management challenges arising from the complex data structures and large volumes of data
• Ethical considerations related to collecting data using wearables, sensors and mobile apps for research purposes.