Assistant professor @TilburgUniversity | Co-founder of
m-Path.io |
#EMA /
#ESM research | Digital technology in mental health care | DJ
I would like to start a veridicality movement in clinical psychology. I've realized this is my primary concern with network models. We *want* them to convey information flow and dynamics, but they're just lag-1 regression models at (relatively) glacial time scales. They don't reflect what we want.
Thrilled to announce the Oxford Psychological Networks Summer School (OxPNS)!
This is the first-ever psychological network analysis workshop in the UK, to be held in magical Oxford from June 22-26, 2026.
To apply and for more information, please visit:
oxfordpns.com
A brief thread 🧵
☕ Time for a new
#m-Path blog post!
📱🤔 A classic
#ESM /
#EMA dilemma: Own smartphone or research-dedicated device?
It sounds trivial, but this choice subtly shapes how people respond. A rarely cited paper tested both, with non-obvious takeaways.
👉 Full breakdown:
blog.m-path.io/blog/blog-1/...
Should participants use their own smartphone in ESM / EMA studies?
We’re launching a bi-weekly m-Path blog on
#ESM /
#EMA measurement, new papers & showcases.
🗓️ Every 2 weeks (Wed).
First up: item quality.
A paper by
@gudruneisele.bsky.social introduces ESM-Q: a consensus checklist for good momentary items.
👉 Read the blog:
blog.m-path.io/blog/our-blo...What makes a good ESM / EMA survey item?
🎄 Hope you’ve got all your presents ready 💝
Google search interest shows a stable pattern:
🎅 “Christmas gift wife” peaks just before Christmas Eve
🎅 “Christmas gift husband” peaks much earlier
#MerryChristmas to all of you! 🎁
📈 Google Trends (Nov 18–Dec 24, 2020–2024)
#dataviz #ggplot2Cool study in JAMA Psychiatry confirms what many have suspected for a while: PHQ (depression questionnaire) instructions are widely misinterpreted by patients. It is unfortunate that a questionnaire as shitty as PHQ-9 has become so ingrained & ubiquitous
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Interpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire Instructions
This survey study assesses whether responses to the Patient Health Questionnaire reflect symptom frequency and severity.
New paper out in Obesity Reviews
#openaccess: Mobile interventions to promote healthier lifestyles are popular, but they risk widening existing health inequalities, and this already starts at intervention uptake!
Work funded by
@ehps.bsky.social.
Read more:
doi.org/10.1111/obr....
Inequalities in Exclusively Mobile Interventions Targeting Weight‐Related Behaviors: Systematic Review of Observational Studies
Mobile health interventions are promising behavior change tools, but they might benefit deprived populations less due to disparities in intervention uptake, engagement, and effectiveness. Evidence so...
📑 New paper by Stephanie Wong et al. captures exactly why m-Path exists.
A phased, user-centered study showing how EMIs can be built quickly, affordably, theory-informed, and at scale, and they used m-Path as their no-code platform.
What struck me was why they needed a platform like ours 👇:
In their review of 149 mental health apps, only 28.9% were publicly available and just *8.3%* could be adapted!
This highlights :
❌ Single-study apps are often not shared
❌ Prototypes aren’t flexible or maintainable
❌ Costly developer dependence
❌ Content that can’t be adapted afterward
However, they showcase m-Path can be the alternative:
✔️ Full researcher independence in developing the app
✔️ Flexible building blocks they can fully tailor
✔️ Fast, theory-driven EMI development
✔️ A validated end product that outlives a single project or grant
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View full thread
PS: The app also look great in Chinese 🍜!
Want to learn everything about
#ESM /
#EMA (and visit beautiful Leuven 🤭)?
Registrations Are Now Open: REAL Workshop in April!
We’re excited to announce that registrations are officially open for the upcoming REAL Workshop, taking place 22–24 April 2026 at KU Leuven!
Secure your spot here:
👉
www.kuleuven.be/samenwerking...
A full week of new insights in
#ESM /
#EMA measurement! 📏📱
What a week! After 5 days, the
#mitnb workshop has come to an end. We had a keynote on time scales and two workshops on careless responding and reliability. The central part of the workshops were the hackathons. We had super diverse hackathons, all designed to assess measurement in
#ESM. (1/4)
A "frontier" RCT showing college students preferred LLM (ChatGPT-4) and peer feedback to teacher feedback, but teacher feedback most improved performance. I hope they analyze feedback for style. I wonder whether students positively responded to sycophancy in LLM.
#PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSkyTeacher, peer, or AI? Comparing effects of feedback sources in higher education
With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs), AI-generated feedback is gaining traction as a scalable feedback source for higher education. To q…
1st day of
#MITNB meeting at
@tesc-tilburgu.bsky.social. Excited for the week ahead, where we'll tackle measurement issues in
#ESM, e.g. modeling processes across timescales, building a formal theory on measurement, and evaluating statistical assumptions in
#ESM data.
Go teamwork <3
Another milestone for our little team!
🎉 200 publications have now cited m-Path according to Google Scholar!
Huge thanks to everyone who uses (and mentions 😜) our
#ESM /
#EMA platform in their papers 🙏
👉 Check out the list: blog.m-path.io/publications
Damn, what an effort! 💪
We built the openESM database:
▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place
▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software
▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python
Find out more:
🌐
openesmdata.org
📝
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Can't wait to see / read the full movie... 😜
New hobby:
Remaking article abstracts as movie trailers to expose hype and fearmongering.
Cool
#ESM /
#EMA study by Domensino and colleagues about (changing) cognitive abilities in patients with acquired brain injury.
Assessed with mobile cognitive tests! 🧠📱
O-A:
doi.org/10.1177/2055...Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
🚀 50,000+ Android downloads!
What began less than five years ago with a simple “hello world” has grown into a trusted platform supporting researchers and clinicians across the globe in capturing the richness of daily life.
We feel deeply thankful (and a little proud too). 💙
When we measure personality multiple times in a study, does it matter if we ask people about their personality *in general* or *since the last time point*?
Turns out: yes!
We found differences in internal consistency, Ms, & SDs but not in the underlying constructs 🧵
doi.org/10.31234/osf...https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tb94v_v1🧵
Velkommen, Danmark!
At m-Path Software, we’re thrilled to welcome Danish to our growing list of supported languages.
And of course, what better symbol than the 🚲, a nod to Denmark’s world-famous cycling culture and smooth, user-friendly journeys.
#ESM /
#EMA /
#blendedcareIntervening on a central node in a network likely does little given that its connected neighbors will "flip it back" immediately. Happy to see this position supported now.
"Change is most likely [..] if it spreads first among relatively poorly connected nodes."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Transformation starts at the periphery of networks where pushback is less - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Transformation starts at the periphery of networks where pushback is less
Just out in JMIR - A team from Salzburg uni built and validated a full mobile stress induction toolbox entirely inside m-Path.
No external software company. No custom coding.
Just researchers developing their own digital paradigms through the m-Path prototype pipeline:
www.jmir.org/2025/1/e75785
Digital Stress Induction in Daily Life Using the Salzburg Mobile Stress Induction (SMSI): Development and Ambulatory Evaluation Study
Background: The use of digital technology enabled examining stress in everyday life. However, ambulatory research depends on the natural occurrence of stressful situations while most standardized stre...
Save the date for the 2026 REAL ESM/EMA Workshop!
🚨 New preprint: We compared 13 methods for detecting momentary careless responding in the WARN-D data (206k+ obs.). Tutorials guide you through each method. The takeaway? Diverging results, inherent subjectivity (to varying degrees), and a clear need for further validation.
osf.io/preprints/ps...Cool preprint from
@ajwright.bsky.social et al. demonstrating that personality change occurs at different time scales!
www.researchgate.net/profile/Aman...https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amanda-Wright-14/publication/395323669_Intervention-Induced_Neuroticism_Change_Across_Multiple_Timescales/links/68bea66907fc6b0e25432d74/Intervention-Induced-Neuroticism-Change-Across-Multiple-Timescales.pdf
📦 A new chapter for m-Path!
We may be moving (real) offices, but one thing is certain: Our trusted coach is joining us!!
From feature brainstorms to deep dives into implementation (and a few philosophical detours 🤓)… our coach has heard it all!
🤔 Can people with dementia participate in intensive experience sampling studies via smartphone?
🧐Yes, they can! Even with high-frequency sampling schemes (8 times / day)!
Work from
@lauradewitte.bsky.social in npj Dementia:
doi.org/10.1038/s444...80% compliance, 0 drop-out. Low reported burden, and highly motivated to complete the surveys carefully.
Below, results from a post-EMA exit survey:
🔑= Adapation
Tailor schedule, human check-ins, sufficient reminders, item format and wording based on input on stakeholder input, etc.
📣 We are looking for a test audience!
We’re excited to introduce a powerful new addition to our mobile sensing packages: m-Path Keyboard Tracking!
#EMA #ESM #mobilesensing #behavioraldata #psychresearchOur custom keyboard logs what participants type on their phone – making it possible to:
✍️ Analyze keystroke behavior (e.g., typing speed, pauses, corrections)
🧠 Conduct content analyses of written text across messaging apps, notes, and more
💬 Study naturalistic language use in digital contexts
As always, privacy is a priority — participants remain fully informed and in control (we added a mute button 🤫 and allow participants to remove sensitive text entries).
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View full thread
Curious to see how keyboard data could enrich your EMA/ESM research and happy to give feedback?
Drop us a message or email us at [contact@m-path.io], we’d be happy to set you up!
Using time series graphs to make causal claims be like
Interested in
#AA methods? Join Maddy's lab! 🔥
I am recruiting a postdoctoral scholar to join my lab at Dartmouth. The ideal candidate will have experience in EMA, passive physiological data, and/or digital therapeutics. Interest and/or experience in chronic pain and co-occurring disorders is preferred.
apply.interfolio.com/169836
Apply - Interfolio
{{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
Cool example of
#CitizenScience meets
#EMA /
#ESM: A large-scale study on how nightly sleep duration 😴 shapes daily emotional experience 🎭.
Bonus points for running a full multiverse of analyses! 🧠🏆
online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...Please stop assuming that too many em dashes means AI written. Some of us are producing grammatically incoherent work the honest way!
Want to learn about dynamic modeling for daily diary, experience sampling, ecological momentary assessment data? 😎
Register for our online course ‘Modeling the dynamics of intensive longitudindal data’ which starts in October 2025! 🤩
utrechtsummerschool.nl/courses/data...Modelling the Dynamics of Intensive Longitudinal Data (e-learning) 2025 | Utrecht Summer School
This online course covers how time series models can be used to model the dynamics of intensive longitudinal data (ILD).
Cool work by Vanhasbroeck et al. (2024) relevant for
#EMA /
#ESM research:
🔁 Moderate to good retest consistency in fast-paced affective measures
📏 Whether it is VAS, Likert or 2D affect grid: Scale type doesn't seem to affect reliability!
🔗:
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
Chasing consistency: On the measurement error in self-reported affect in experiments - Behavior Research Methods
How feelings change over time is a central topic in emotion research. To study these affective fluctuations, researchers often ask participants to repeatedly indicate how they feel on a self-report ra...
📱 Want to know when to schedule your
#EMA /
#ESM beeps for the highest completion rates?
⏰ Timing matters: some moments during the day and week are more receptive than others.
See:
link.springer.com/article/10.3...🆕 New in m-Path: Text-to-speech voice narration! 🎙️✨
We're making
#EMA /
#ESM more inclusive by enabling items to be read aloud — supporting participants with visual impairments or reading difficulties.
Currently available in 5 languages! 🌍
For more info:
manual.m-path.io/knowledge-ba...How does where we live – urban, rural, or in-between – relate to our mental health? 🌆🏞️
In this cross-national study, we investigate the links between urbanicity, anxiety and depressive disorders in 500,000 adults across the UK, Norway, and New Zealand 🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...Join me at the University of Witten/Herdecke for research on meta scientific topics, replication work or other fun things :-) as well as teaching some IMO wonderful students
short.sg/j/56902143
Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in (w/m/d) am Lehrstuhl für Psychologische Forschungsmethoden bei Universität Witten/Herdecke
Wir suchen: Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in (w/m/d) am Lehrstuhl für Psychologische Forschungsmethoden (Teilzeit) • Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße 50, 58455 Witten, Deutschland
Want to make nice graphs with me, starting this summer? I am hiring for two PhD positions at the University of Witten/Herdecke.
