Research methods for studying daily life Flashcards
An overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behavior, physiology,
experience, and environments of humans in naturalistic settings.
Ambulatory assessment
A methodology where participants complete a questionnaire about their thoughts, feelings,
and behavior of the day at the end of the day.
Daily diary method
A methodology where participants describe their experiences and behavior of a given day
retrospectively upon a systematic reconstruction on the following day.
Day construction method
An overarching term to describe methodologies that repeatedly sample participants’ real-
world experiences, behavior, and physiology in real time.
Ecological momentary assesment
The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for
what happens in everyday life.
Ecological validity
A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently
records snippets of ambient sounds around them.
Electronically activated recorder
A methodology where participants report on their momentary thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors at different points in time over the course of a day
Experience sampling method
The degree to which a finding generalizes from the specific sample and context of a study to
some larger population and broader settings.
External validity
A scientific approach whereby researchers start with an observational field study to identify
an effect in the real world, follow up with laboratory experimentation to verify the effect and
isolate the causal mechanisms, and return to field research to corroborate their experimental findings
Full cycle psychology
refers to the ability to arrive at broad conclusions based on a smaller
sample of observations. For these conclusions to be true the sample should accurately
represent the larger population from which it is drawn.
Generalize
The degree to which a cause-effect relationship between two variables has been
unambiguously established.
Internal validity
A quantitative text analysis methodology that automatically extracts grammatical and
psychological information from a text by counting word frequencies.
Linguistic inquiry and word count
A methodology where a research team follows an individual around with a video camera to
objectively document a person’s daily life as it is lived.
Lived day analysis
A phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital or doctor’s
office but not in their everyday lives
White coat hypertension
