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“Everyone who is engaged in or considering work in mobile sensing surely will benefit from a careful review of this book. The volume provides thorough discussions of privacy, reproducibility, the conduct of research, and ethics. Chapters richly describe passive sensing modalities, analytic methods, and applications, with an emphasis on psychological science. Valuable features include considerations for defining summary variables, reviews of mobile sensing devices and apps, instructions for preprocessing data, and examples to illustrate points. Importantly, the strengths and limitations of mobile sensing research are highlighted.”

—Arthur A. Stone, PhD, Department of Psychology and Director, Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science, University of Southern California


“Mobile sensing is set to transform the field of psychology. This volume, with its readable and practical chapters on every important element of mobile sensing research, is an essential companion for anyone doing work in this area. Broad in scope and authoritative in content, this is the one book you need, whether you are a graduate student just starting your first mobile sensing study or an experienced researcher seeking to improve your designs, methods, and analyses.”

—Samuel D. Gosling, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin


“With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, the book covers a wide range of topics, including how to collect mobile sensing data, how to analyze the data, and applications in specific fields, such as aging, close relationships, emotion detection, and cognitive assessment. This comprehensive, single-volume source is a 'must' for those seeking to explore the vast potential of mobile sensing.”

—Niall Bolger, PhD, Department of Psychology, Columbia University


“This wide-ranging volume from well-respected editors and contributors provides an impressive 'one-stop shop' for researchers interested in mobile sensing research. The book offers primers on the background and key concepts of mobile sensing, data acquisition and analysis, and applications in specific domains. I have no doubt that this book will serve as a tremendous fount of guidance and inspiration for the next generation of mobile sensing researchers.”

—Joshua Smyth, PhD, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Health Psychology, The Ohio State University

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Table of Contents

I. Mobile Sensing: Background and Key Concepts

1. How to Conduct Mobile Sensing Research, Gabriella M. Harari, Serena Soh, & Lara Kroencke

2. Designing for Privacy in Mobile Sensing Systems, Jason I. Hong

3. Transparency and Reproducibility in Mobile Sensing Research, Cornelia Wrzus & Ramona Schoedel

II. Mobile Sensors: Technological Know-How and Methodological How-To

4. Acquisition and Analysis of Location Data, Sven Lautenbach, Sarah Lohr, & Markus Reichert

5. Acquisition and Analysis of Physical Behavior Data, Marco Giurgiu & J. B. J. (Hans) Bussmann

6. Acquisition and Analysis of Ambulatory Autonomic Nervous System Data, Eco J. C. de Geus & Martin J. Gevonden

7. Analysis of Phone Logs and Phone Usage Patterns, Sandrine R. Müller, Aaron Cohen, Marcel Enge, & John F. Rauthmann

8. Mobile Application Usage in Psychological Research, Larissa Sust, Sanaz Talaifar, & Clemens Stachl

9. Examining Well-Being in Situated Contexts with Computational Modeling of Social Media Data, Koustuv Saha & Munmun De Choudhury

10. Behavioral Audio Signal Processing in Mobile Sensing Research, Rajat Hebbar, Arindam Jati, Tiantian Feng, Ramon Reyes, Alexander F. Danvers, Matthias R. Mehl, & Shrikanth S. Narayanan

11. Acquisition and Analysis of Camera Sensor Data (Life Logging), Edison Thomaz & Mariella Dimiccoli

12. Beyond the Smartphone: The Future of Wearables as Mobile Sensors, Kristof Van Laerhoven

13. Viva Experience Sampling: Combining Passive Mobile Sensing with Active Momentary Assessments, Ulrich Ebner-Priemer & Philip Santangelo

III. Analysis of Mobile Sensing Data

14. A Psychometric Perspective on Mobile Sensing Data, Michael Eid & Jana Holtmann

15. Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling for the Analysis of Mobile Sensing Data, Jana Holtmann, Michael Eid, & Martina Kanning

16. Dynamic Network Analysis, Emorie D. Beck & Stuti Thapa

17. Machine Learning for Mobile Sensing Data, Andreas M. Brandmaier

18. Deep Learning Methods for Mobile Sensing, Cara J. Arizmendi, Christopher J. Urban, Kathleen M. Gates

19. Big Data Dimensionality Reduction Methods, Andreas M. Brandmaier

IV. Mobile Sensing Applications in Psychological Science

20. Mobile Sensing in Personality Science, Felix Beierle, Sandra C. Matz, & Mathias Allemand

21. Mobile Sensing Applications in Moral Psychology, Farzan Karimi-Malekabadi, Mohammad Atari, & Morteza Dehghani

22. Mobile Sensing in Relationship Research, Andrea B. Horn & Adela C. Timmons

23. Wearable Technologies in the Workplace: Sensing to Create Responsive Industrial and Occupational Environments Optimized for Health, Jacob N. Hyde, Johnny R. Runyon, Altaf Engineer, Beth Kramer, Casey M. Lindberg, & Esther M. Sternberg

24. Emotion Detection with Mobile Sensing, Koen Niemeijer & Peter Kuppens

25. Cognition on the Go: Opportunities and Challenges for Mobile Cognitive Health Research, Martin Sliwinski, Nelson Roque, & Karra Harrington

26. Mobile Sensing in Developmental Science: A Practical Guide for Researchers, Kaya de Barbaro & Caitlin M. Fausey

27. Mobile Sensing in Aging Research, Birthe Macdonald, Melanie Becker, Mike Martin, & Christina Röcke

28. mHealth Interventions for Health Behaviors, Christine Vinci, Brian Gonzalez, Darla Kendzor, Michael Businelle, & Santosh Kumar

29. Sensing in Clinical Psychology, Geneva K. Jonathan & Dror Ben-Zeev

30. Smart Interventions, Inbal Nahum-Shani

31. Behavior Change, Jean Costa, Pablo Paredes, & Tanzeem Choudhury

32. Mobile Sensing in Neuroscience: Predicting Brain Functional Connectivity Using Smartphone Data, Mikio Obuchi, Jeremy Huckins, Weichen Wang, Arvind Pillai, & Andrew Campbell

V. Conclusions and Future Directions

33. Mobile Sensing in Psychology: Where We Are and Where We Might Go From Here, Matthias R. Mehl, Michael Eid, Cornelia Wrzus, Gabriella M. Harari, & Ulrich Ebner-Priemer

Author Index

Subject Index

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About the Editors

Matthias R. Mehl, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. He is a social and personality psychologist interested in the conceptualization and measurement of how everyday social processes affect health and well-being. He employs mobile sensing methods for studying real-world social interactions and has pioneered a method that involves the unobtrusive sampling of ambient sounds via a smartphone app (the Electronically Activated Recorder, or EAR). Dr. Mehl has published extensively and given workshops on mobile sensing and other real-world psychological research methods. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

• Author's website
• All titles by Matthias R. Mehl

Michael Eid, PhD, is Professor of Methods and Evaluation at the Free University of Berlin in Germany. His research focuses on measurement theory, in particular, the development of psychometric models for longitudinal and multimethod research. His more applied research contributions are in the area of subjective well-being, mood regulation, and health psychology. With respect to mobile sensing, Dr. Eid is especially interested in the psychometric foundation of multimethod mobile sensing research strategies and the modeling of intensive longitudinal data. Widely published, he has served as editor of several journals in the area of methodology and assessment.

• Author's website
• All titles by Michael Eid

Cornelia Wrzus, PhD, is Professor of Psychological Aging Research at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she founded the Daily Life Lab. Her research focuses on socioemotional and personality development across the entire adult lifespan. Dr. Wrzus has published many articles on personality development, emotional processes, and social dynamics in daily life, using experience sampling, ambulatory physiological assessments, and mobile sensing. One particular concern is the integration of both open science standards and privacy protection in ambulatory assessment research of people’s daily lives. She has served on the editorial boards of several personality journals and is president-elect of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment.

Gabriella M. Harari, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, where she directs the Media and Personality Lab. Her research focuses on everyday behavior and its relationship to personality and well-being. She takes an ecological approach to conducting her research, emphasizing the importance of studying people in their natural physical and digital contexts. Over the last decade, Dr. Harari has published extensively on mobile sensing and given workshops about using the method for studying daily life.

Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Mental mHealth (mobile health) Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. His work is characterized by its methodological focus on ambulatory assessment, investigating phenomena of interest in everyday life and real time. He is particularly interested in a multimodal operationalization of phenomena of interest, combining e-diaries with wearables, and digital phenotypes; real-time analyses and real-time feedback; and analysis of dynamic processes. Dr. Ebner-Priemer provides the technological mHealth framework for studies on a broad range of mental disorders. He is former president of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment and current Chair of the ECNP Digital Health Network.

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Contributors

Mathias Allemand, PhD, Dynamics of Healthy Aging University Research Priority Program, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Cara J. Arizmendi, PhD, Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC

Mohammad Atari, PhD, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA

Emorie D. Beck, PhD, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois; Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA

Melanie Becker, MSc, Department of Psychology (Gerontopsychology and Gerontology), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Felix Beierle, PhD, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan; Institute of Clinical Epidemiology and Biometry, University of Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany

Dror Ben-Zeev, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Andreas M. Brandmaier, PhD, Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and Department of Psychology, MSB Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Michael Businelle, PhD, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK

J. B. J. (Hans) Bussmann, PhD, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Andrew Campbell, PhD, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Tanzeem Choudhury, PhD, Department of Information Science, Cornell Tech, New York, NY

Aaron Cohen, MA, Written World Consulting, Biddeford, ME

Jean Costa, PhD, Toyota Research Institute, Los Altos, CA

Alexander F. Danvers, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Kaya de Barbaro, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

Munmun De Choudhury, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

Eco J. C. de Geus, PhD, Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Morteza Dehghani, PhD, Department of Psychology and Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Mariella Dimiccoli, PhD, Institut de Robotica i Infomatica Industrial, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Ulrich W. Ebner-Priemer, PhD, Institute of Sports and Sports Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Michael Eid, PhD, Department of Psychology and Education, Division of Methods and Evaluation, Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Marcel Enge, MSc, Department of Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology, and Psychological Assessment, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

Altaf Engineer, PhD, College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Caitlin M. Fausey, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

Tiantian Feng, MS, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Kathleen M. Gates, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Martin J. Gevonden, PhD, Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Marco Giurgiu, PhD, Institute of Sports and Sports Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Brian Gonzalez, PhD, Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL

Gabriella M. Harari, PhD, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Karra Harrington, PhD, College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Rajat Hebbar, MS, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Jana Holtmann, PhD, Wilhelm Wundt Institute for Psychology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany

Jason I. Hong, PhD, Human Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Andrea B. Horn, PhD, Dynamics of Healthy Aging University Research Priority Program, Center for Gerontology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Jeremy Huckins, PhD, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Jacob N. Hyde, PsyD, Warfighter Consulting, Scottsdale, AZ, and Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Arindam Jati, PhD, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Geneva K. Jonathan, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA

Martina Kanning, PhD, Department of Sports Sciences, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Farzan Karimi-Malekabadi, MA, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Darla Kendzor, PhD, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK

Beth Kramer, MPH, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Lara Kroencke, MSc, Department of Psychological Assessment and Personality Psychology, University of Munster, Munster, Germany

Santosh Kumar, PhD, Department of Computer Science, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN

Peter Kuppens, PhD, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Sven Lautenbach, PhD, GIScience Research Group, Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Casey M. Lindberg, PhD, Institute on Place and Wellbeing, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Sarah Lohr, MS, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

Birthe Macdonald, PhD, Department of Psychology (Gerontopsychology and Gerontology), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Mike Martin, PhD, Department of Psychology (Gerontopsychology and Gerontology and Health Longevity Center, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Sandra C. Matz, PhD, Management Division, Columbia Business School, New York, NY

Matthias R. Mehl, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Sandrine R. Müller, PhD, Google, New York, NY

Inbal Nahum-Shani, PhD, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Shrikanth S. Narayanan, PhD, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Koen Niemeijer, MS, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Mikio Obuchi, MS, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Pablo Paredes, PhD, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD

Arvind Pillai, MS, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

John F. Rauthmann, PhD, Department of Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology, and Psychological Assessment, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

Markus Reichert, PhD, Department of eHealth and Sports Analytics, Faculty of Sport Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Ramon Reyes, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Christina Röcke, PhD, Dynamics of Healthy Aging University Research Priority Program, Center for Gerontology and Health Longevity Center, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Nelson Roque, PhD, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Penn State University, State College, PA

Johnny R. Runyon, PhD, Department of Environmental Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Koustuv Saha, PhD, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL

Philip Santangelo, PhD, Institute of Sports and Sports Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

Ramona Schoedel, PhD, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

Martin Sliwinski, PhD, College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Serena Soh, MA, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Clemens Stachl, PhD, Institute of Behavioral Science and Technology, School of Management, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Esther M. Sternberg, MD, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Larissa Sust, MSc, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

Sanaz Talaifar, PhD, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Stuti Thapa, BS, Industrial–Organizational Psychology Program, Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK

Edison Thomaz, PhD, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

Adela C. Timmons, PhD, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

Christopher J. Urban, MS, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Kristof Van Laerhoven, PhD, Ubiquitous Computing–ETI, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

Christine Vinci, PhD, Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL

Weichen Wang, MS, Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Cornelia Wrzus, PhD, Department of Psychological Aging Research, Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

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Audience

Applied researchers and graduate students in social, personality, health, developmental, industrial/organizational, and clinical psychology; public health; sociology; medicine; computer science; and information science.

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Course Use

May serve as a text in graduate-level courses.