On the Use of Personalization to Enhance Compliance in Experience Sampling

Abstract

This paper argues that allowing personalization can increase respondent adherence in experience sampling studies. We report a one week long field experiment (N=36), which compared response rates when respondents select the times at which they are prompted to report in an experience sampling protocol (experimental group), versus the situation where these times are selected by the experimenter(control group). Results showed that participants who could choose their time slots showed a significantly higher response ratethan participants who received the questions on preset time slots (p=0.002). There was no difference in response rates for different times of the day. Social influence, as permitted through the personalizationprocess is offered as one of the explanations for enhancingcompliance to the experience sampling probes. Future researchneeds to establish whether this or other practical explanations regardingrespondent convenience explain the increased adherenceand whether the found effect can be sustained for longer studies.