Erik Jorgensen, Au.D., Ph.D., CCC-A
Assistant Professor
Soundscape and Audiology Research Lab
Communication Sciences and Disorders, UW-Madison
An Introduction to Ecological Momentary Assessment in Speech & Hearing Science
Self-report measures are a core tool for evaluating intervention effectiveness in speech and hearing science. Traditionally, these measures are implemented retrospectively, where individuals provide information about their behaviors and feelings during the past month or longer. There are inherent limitations to this approach due to biases in how individuals answer questions about their past. One increasingly popular method to address some of these limitations is to use ecological momentary assessment (EMA), where the behaviors and feelings of individuals are sampled frequently and repeatedly, yielding data with low recall bias and high context resolution. In this talk, I will provide an overview of EMA, including arguments for its feasibility and validity in speech and hearing science. The analyses of these data and the statistical benefits of repeated measures will be discussed. I will also review practical, logistical, and technological considerations for individuals looking to implement this method in their own work. Finally, I will present some of my lab’s recent work using EMA to measure fatigue among adolescents who are hard of hearing and to try and improve predictions of real-world speech-in-noise perception.
This work was supported by funding from NIH; R21DC021512