Compliance With Mobile Ecological Momentary Assessment Protocols in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Mobile device-based ecological momentary assessment (mobile-EMA) is increasingly used to collect participants' data in real-time and in context. Although EMA offers methodological advantages, these advantages can be diminished by participant noncompliance. However, evidence on how well participants comply with mobile-EMA protocols and how study design factors associated with participant compliance is limited, especially in the youth literature. OBJECTIVE: To systematically and meta-analytically examine youth’s compliance to mobile-EMA protocols and moderators of participant compliance in clinical and nonclinical settings. METHODS: Studies using mobile devices to collect EMA data among youth (age ≤18 years old) were identified. A systematic review was conducted to describe the characteristics of mobile-EMA protocols and author-reported factors associated with compliance. Random effects meta-analyses were conducted to estimate the overall compliance across studies and to explore factors associated with differences in youths’ compliance. RESULTS: This review included 42 unique studies that assessed behaviors, subjective experiences, and contextual information. Mobile phones were used as the primary mode of EMA data collection in 48% (20/42) of the reviewed studies. In total, 12% (5/42) of the studies used wearable devices in addition to the EMA data collection platforms. About half of the studies (62%, 24/42) recruited youth from nonclinical settings. Most (98%, 41/42) studies used a time-based sampling protocol. Among these studies, most (95%, 39/41) prompted youth 2-9 times daily, for a study length ranging from 2-42 days. Sampling frequency and study length did not differ between studies with participants from clinical versus nonclinical settings. Most (88%, 36/41) studies with a time-based sampling protocol defined compliance as the proportion of prompts to which participants responded. In these studies, the weighted average compliance rate was 78.3%. The average compliance rates were not different between studies with clinical (76.9%) and nonclinical (79.2%; P=.29) and studies that used only a mobile-EMA platform (77.4%) and mobile platform plus additional wearable devices (73.0%, P=.36). Among clinical studies, the mean compliance rate was significantly lower in studies that prompted participants 2-3 times (73.5%) or 4-5 times (66.9%) compared with studies with a higher sampling frequency (6+ times: 89.3%). Among nonclinical studies, a higher average compliance rate was observed in studies that prompted participants 2-3 times daily (91.7%) compared with those that prompted participants more frequently (4-5 times: 77.4%; 6+ times: 75.0%). The reported compliance rates did not differ by duration of EMA period among studies from either clinical or nonclinical settings. CONCLUSIONS: The compliance rate among mobile-EMA studies in youth is moderate but suboptimal. Study design may affect protocol compliance differently between clinical and nonclinical participants; including additional wearable devices did not affect participant compliance. A more consistent compliance-related result reporting practices can facilitate understanding and improvement of participant compliance with EMA data collection among youth.