Summer Course: Intensive Longitudinal Methods - Introduction and Data Analysis Camp

See below for details of what looks like a very useful summer course being run in Aberdeen.

Summer Course: Intensive Longitudinal Methods - Introduction and Data Analysis Camp

Instructors: Dr Gertraud Stadler, Dr Dan Powell, and Prof Niall Bolger

Date: 23rd - 27th July, 2018

Location: University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

A 5-day course covering the design and analysis of intensive longitudinal studies.

Early bird  date for registration is Monday, 16th April 2018.

This five-day course provides an introduction to designing and analysing intensive longitudinal studies. Intensive longitudinal methods allow researchers to examine processes in daily life in a way that is not possible using traditional methods. Researchers can obtain repeated observations over the course of hours, days, and weeks, and often even longer. Intensive longitudinal data, however, present multiple design and data analytic challenges stemming from the various possible sources of interdependence in these data.  This course will help participants in choosing their design in line with their theoretical questions, and practice analysing intensive longitudinal data with example data sets and their own data.

For further information, including details on how to book a place, please visit our website https://www.abdn.ac.uk/iahs/research/health-psychology/ilm-aberdeen-summer-course-1367.php or contact lyn.ajanaku@abdn.ac.uk, our workshop administrator.

Irish Behavioural Science and Policy Network Event on Behavioural Economics and Healthcare in Ireland

Our next session takes place on March 8th in the Economics and Social Research Institute seminar room. It will address the application of behavioural economics and behavioural science more generally in healthcare in Ireland. The event will take place from 12pm to 2pm. It will consist of short opening contributions from four people actively involved in this area followed by a moderated panel discussion, and we will also include time for networking and discussion of potential collaborations. Currently confirmed panels are Dr. Fiona Kiernan from Beaumont Hospital who has been working on behavioural interventions in the area of sepsis, Kirsten Connelly Deputy Director of Communications at HSE, Robert Murphy Senior Researcher at the Department of Health who has been working on the interaction between the health system and patients in a range of contexts, and Dr. Pete Lunn who is the lead researcher in the ESRI Behavioural Economics program. To attend the event, please sign up here. The event is free but registration is required for planning purposes.

Summary of study on well-being and self-control in the Irish population

On January 25, 2018, we presented new data on well-being and self-control in the Irish population at the Institute of Banking. We conducted a study using the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) with Amarach Research and asked almost 1000 Irish individuals to tell us about three episodes they experienced “Yesterday”. Below are some graphs from the presentation and some further reading and offers a snapshot of the many potential uses of such data across contexts.

If you like to know more about the study or are interested in running similar studies yourself, please contact Liam Delaney (liam.delaney@ucd.ie) or Leonhard Lades (leonhard.lades@ucd.ie). 


Illustrative findings:

Figure 1: Four experiences during the day.

Figure 2: When did people engage in different activities?

Figure 3: How positive did people feel during different activities?

Figure 4: How many desires did people have and how many desires led to self-control failures. We define self-control failures as desires that are (i) conflicting, (ii) attempted to be resisted, and (iii) nonetheless enacted. Hence of the 1932 desires we recorded, 295 led to a self-control failure.

Figure 5: In which domains did desires (the length of each bar) and self-control failures (coded in red) occur?

Figure 6: When and in which domains did desires occur?

Figure 7: When and in which domains did self-control failures occur?

Figure 8: The links between desire enactment, use of self-control, and positive experiences. On the left we see that people have more positive feelings when they enact a given desire (versus when they do not enact it), given that people to not try to resist enacting the desire. That is in line with previous literature. However, on the right we see that the same "enactment-boost" is present, when people tray to resist enacting. The latter is contrary to recent findings and suggests that people "might just enjoy it" despite being a self-control failure.

Figure 9: Trait self-control across the population color coded in low, medium, and high.

Figure 10: Especially in the first half of the day, people with low trait self-control are more tired than people with high trait self-control.

Further reading:

Delaney, L., & Lades, L. K. (2017). Present Bias and Everyday Self‐Control Failures: A Day Reconstruction Study. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 30(5), 1157-1167.

Hofmann, W., Baumeister, R. F., Förster, G., & Vohs, K. D. (2012). Everyday temptations: an experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control. Journal of personality and social psychology, 102(6), 1318.

Hofmann, W., Kotabe, H., & Luhmann, M. (2013). The spoiled pleasure of giving in to temptation. Motivation and Emotion, 37(4), 733-742.

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The day reconstruction method. Science, 306(5702), 1776-1780.