Optimizing the frequency of ecological momentary assessments using signal processing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is increasingly recognized as a vital tool for tracking the fluctuating nature of mental states and symptoms in psychiatric research. However, determining the optimal sampling rate - that is, deciding how often participants should be queried to report their symptoms - remains a significant challenge. To address this issue, our study utilizes the Nyquist-Shannon theorem from signal processing, which establishes that any sampling rate more than twice the highest frequency component of a signal is adequate. METHODS: We applied the Nyquist-Shannon theorem to analyze two EMA datasets on depressive symptoms, encompassing a combined total of 35,452 data points collected over periods ranging from 30 to 90 days per individual. RESULTS: Our analysis of both datasets suggests that the most effective sampling strategy involves measurements at least every other week. We find that measurements at higher frequencies provide valuable and consistent information across both datasets, with significant peaks at weekly and daily intervals. CONCLUSIONS: Ideal frequency for measurements remains largely consistent, regardless of the specific symptoms used to estimate depression severity. For conditions in which abrupt or transient symptom dynamics are expected, such as during treatment, more frequent data collection is recommended. However, for regular monitoring, weekly assessments of depressive symptoms may be sufficient. We discuss the implications of our findings for EMA study optimization, address our study's limitations, and outline directions for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".