Participation and Power: A Case Study of Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Engage Adolescents in Academic Research
Provides design guidelines for EMA platforms to better engage adolescents in research, addressing power dynamics and ethical practices.
The study developed a youth-centered EMA platform and evaluated it in a longitudinal study with adolescent twins, finding that teen-centered design and gamification sustained engagement, but technical issues and rigid data structures caused privacy concerns and hindered data analysis.
Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is widely used to study adolescents' experiences; yet, how the design of EMA platforms shapes engagement, research practices, and power dynamics in youth studies remains under-examined. We developed a youth-centered EMA platform prioritizing youth engagement and researcher support, and evaluated it through a case study on a longitudinal investigation with adolescent twins focused on mental health and sleep behavior. Interviews with the research team examined how the platform design choices shaped participant onboarding, sustained engagement, risk monitoring, and data interpretation. The app's teen-centered design and gamified features sustained teen engagement, while the web portal streamlined administrative oversight through a centralized dashboard. However, technical instability and rigid data structures created significant hurdles, leading to privacy concerns among parents and complicating the researchers' ability to analyze raw usage metadata. We provide actionable interaction design guidelines for developing EMA platforms that prioritize youth agency, ethical practice, and research goals.