Overview of ExpiWell for ESM & EMA
ExpiWell for ESM and EMA Assessments
ExpiWell is a software platform for running Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies: you build surveys, schedule them over days, weeks, or months, and participants answer them on their phone as the moment happens. It was created and designed by top researchers who conduct ESM and EMA themselves, and it can be used for any type of ESM, EMA, and longitudinal assessment.
Our goal is to make the process for researchers simple, yet packed with powerful features. Absolutely no coding is needed! You can focus on designing your study, collecting your data, and writing your papers.
How does ExpiWell work? A study runs in three stages.
Set up your study and invite participants
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Researchers create an ESM/EMA project on our website. This project can contain multiple surveys which are scheduled over days, weeks, or months.
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Each project researchers create has a unique access code that is automatically generated or created by the researcher.
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Participants download our free ExpiWell mobile apps on iOS or Android. See here for more information on our ExpiWell mobile apps.
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Participants sign in to the app and then enter the access code to start the project. You can also directly invite participants who have downloaded the app to the project, if you have their email address.
Surveys reach participants at the right moment
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Researchers schedule their surveys through a calendar-type function. All surveys are automatically scheduled based on participant time zones (e.g., a 9am-scheduled survey will be sent at 9am Eastern Time and 9am Pacific Time). Notifications and reminders are sent to participants via the mobile app.
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The mobile app opens and closes surveys to participants based on allotted timeframes (e.g., a survey window open from 9am-10am). This helps researchers avoid having to manually remove participant data if participants don't complete surveys on time or complete all surveys in one shot at the end of the day.
Because the app closes a survey when its window ends, a response is either in-the-moment or it doesn't exist. You never have to decide afterwards whether a late answer counts — the timing is enforced as the study runs, not cleaned up once it's over.
Track, pay, and export
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Real-time tracking of participant response rates can be done through our system. You can check ongoing response rates and send additional personalized notifications to participants who have a low response rate. No need to download data and link surveys to determine individual response rates at the end of the project.
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All surveys for a participant are automatically connected. No need for researchers to create unique participant IDs and manually link up surveys over time for each participant.
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Researchers can pay participants through the ExpiWell app via Amazon gift cards. This can help save on administrative costs of manually contacting participants and having them share the payment information.
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Data is downloadable in CSV format which can be exported to Excel, SPSS, SAS, or other programs.
Things to note:
There is no charge for sending ExpiWell notifications or reminders to complete surveys... so fire away on as many surveys as you'd like!
Web links can be included in surveys. Please click HERE to learn more. Researchers sometimes create a survey in ExpiWell to direct participants to a longer survey using another survey platform; one can use ExpiWell as a notification and tracking platform as there is no additional charge for any number of notifications and reminders to participants. However, many researchers choose to use ExpiWell's survey features to reduce the problems of using multiple survey platforms. Researchers have created surveys as long as 300 questions with the "Automatic Next Question" feature that moves to the next question once participants select a response option.