The effects of assessment intensity on participant burden, compliance, within-person variance, and within-person relationships in ambulatory assessment

Considering the very large number of studies that have applied ambulatory assessment (AA) in the last decade across diverse fields of research, knowledge about the effects that these design choices have on participants’ perceived burden, data quantity (i.e., compliance with the AA protocol), and data quality (e.g., within-person relationships between time-varying variables) is surprisingly restricted. The aim of the current research was to experimentally manipulate aspects of an AA study’s assessment intensity—sampling frequency (Study 1) and questionnaire length (Study 2)—and to investigate their impact on perceived burden, compliance, within-person variability, and within-person relationships between time-varying variables. In Study 1, students (n = 313) received either 3 or 9 questionnaires per day for the first 7 days of the study. In Study 2, students (n = 282) received either a 33- or 82-item questionnaire three times a day for 14 days. Within-person variability and within-person relationships were investigated with respect to momentary pleasant-unpleasant mood and state extraversion. The results of Study 1 showed that a higher sampling frequency increased perceived burden but did not affect the other aspects we investigated. In Study 2, longer questionnaire length did not affect perceived burden or compliance but yielded a smaller degree of within-person variability in momentary mood (but not in state extraversion) and a smaller within-person relationship between state extraversion and mood. Differences between Studies 1 and 2 with respect to the type of manipulation of assessment intensity are discussed.