Participation and Power: A Case Study of Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Engage Adolescents in Academic Research

2026-04-13

AI Summary

This study addresses the insufficient attention to participant engagement, ethical practice, and power dynamics in existing ecological momentary assessment (EMA) platforms used in adolescent research. To redress this gap, the authors developed and evaluated a youth-centered EMA platform through a longitudinal twin-case study complemented by in-depth interviews. The work proposes interaction design principles grounded in adolescent agency, ethical considerations, and research objectives. The platform employs a hybrid architecture comprising a gamified mobile application for participants and a researcher-facing web dashboard, which collectively enhance engagement and streamline study management. However, technical instability and rigid data structures raised privacy concerns and constrained meta-analytic potential. Emphasizing participatory design as a means to rebalance power relations, this research offers a novel paradigm for adolescent-oriented EMA studies.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments

Abstract

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is widely used to study adolescents' experiences; yet, how the design of EMA platforms shapes engagement, research practices, and power dynamics in youth studies remains under-examined. We developed a youth-centered EMA platform prioritizing youth engagement and researcher support, and evaluated it through a case study on a longitudinal investigation with adolescent twins focused on mental health and sleep behavior. Interviews with the research team examined how the platform design choices shaped participant onboarding, sustained engagement, risk monitoring, and data interpretation. The app's teen-centered design and gamified features sustained teen engagement, while the web portal streamlined administrative oversight through a centralized dashboard. However, technical instability and rigid data structures created significant hurdles, leading to privacy concerns among parents and complicating the researchers' ability to analyze raw usage metadata. We provide actionable interaction design guidelines for developing EMA platforms that prioritize youth agency, ethical practice, and research goals.

Problem

• Ecological Momentary Assessment
• adolescent engagement
• power dynamics
• youth-centered design
• research participation

Innovation

• Ecological Momentary Assessment
• youth-centered design
• gamified features
• participant engagement
• research ethics