Pollion - new smartphone data collection app

How can researchers and universities make better use of smartphones?

Programming dedicated apps for different research needs is costly both in the time and resources needed. It also requires deeper programming skills not always available to the average researcher.

Pollion, a new service for researchers, tries to answer this problem by providing a flexible data collection platform for different research needs. Pollion is able to collect deep behavioural data from respondents through short surveys and the smartphone's various sensors (e.g. GPS signal). This makes it possible to collect individuals' behaviour across geographic space for example.

Pollion can also be used for more elaborate designs using the day reconstruction method or simpler tasks such as getting instantaneous feedback from a study group (e.g. course evaluations).

Pollion will be launching across major smartphone operating systems soon. Get more information on the Pollion website.

PROMIS - Improving the use of Patient Reported Outcomes

Thanks to Professor Arthur Stone for pointing to this exciting initiative in improving the science behind patient-reported outcomes in the US.

This initiative -the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) - aims to revolutionize the way patient-reported outcome tools are selected and employed in clinical research and practice evaluation. It will also establish a national resource for accurate and efficient measurement of patient-reported symptoms and other health outcomes in clinical practice.

 The website for the project is here

10.37am: Monday

New figures suggest that irish people are the most miserable in Europe. Apparently, we spend the equivalent of more than a working day -- nine hours and 28 minutes -- every week griping about something. And women are more likely to moan than men. A majority (59pc) of both sexes agreed on that.

Our objects of grief (in order) are the weather (see previous papers on weather and well-being here and here), traffic, feeling tired and our workloads. And we are at the peak of our grief at 10.37am each Monday. "That's when more of us are whining and moaning than at any other time of the week."

The survey was conducted by Uniroyal Tyres and involved asking 4,000 Europeans about the frequency of their gripes. More details are available in the Irish Independent here.

Irish Day Reconstruction Project

A new website will be up soon detailing the ongoing well-being work being conducted here. below is the initial version. It contains reading lists, details of the studies being undertaken, links, people involved and so on.

http://geary.ucd.ie/wellbeing/home

We recently won an IRCHSS grant to carry out this work on a representative population sample examining town-level factors affecting well-being, measurement of well-being, integration of biological markers and so on. This builds on work we have already conducted on a student sample and on a sample of commuters in Dublin. From this work, we integrated biological markers to study financial discounting and we are about to release a set of papers examining diurnal biological patterns and their relation to affect.

This is strongly related to another project we have been developing examining health history in Ireland in the 20th century including the health and well-being of migrants to the UK, US and other destinations. We are currently working on a set of papers examining the determinants of infant mortality in Ireland and how early conditions affected the later health and well-being of the Irish population.

http://geary.ucd.ie/secondarydata/

Happy to talk to anyone who is interested in either of these projects.

Images of Research: Stress Mapping

Michael Daly, Gerard O'Neill and I recently released a website that gives details of some experimental work we were doing linking GPS devices, heart rate monitors and day reconstruction information. This is available below. The pictures are due to Michael and some very useful software

Stress Maps