Development and Validation of a Smartphone-Based App for the Longitudinal Assessment of Anxiety in Daily Life

• Published in: Assessment (Odessa, Fla.) Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 959 - 968
• Main Authors: Fortea, Lydia, Tortella-Feliu, Miquel, Juaneda-Seguí, Asier, De la Peña-Arteaga, Víctor, Chavarría-Elizondo, Pamela, Prat-Torres, Laia, Soriano-Mas, Carles, Lane, Sean P., Radua, Joaquim, Fullana, Miquel A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-06-2023
• Subjects: Anxiety - diagnosis; Anxiety Disorders - diagnosis; Humans; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Mobile Applications; Reproducibility of Results; Smartphone; app; psychometrics; anxiety; smartphone; ecological momentary assessment
• ISSN: 1073-1911; 1552-3489; 1552-3489
• DOI: 10.1177/10731911211065166

Current methods to assess human anxiety often ignore that anxiety is a dynamic process and have limitations such as high recall bias and low generalizability to real life. Smartphone apps using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may overcome such limitations. We developed a smartphone app for the longitudinal evaluation of anxiety symptoms using EMA. We assessed the feasibility (retention and compliance) and psychometric properties (reliability and validity) of the app over 6 months in a sample of 99 participants with different levels of anxiety. The EMA-based smartphone app was highly feasible. It showed excellent within-person and between-person reliability, high convergent and moderate discriminant validity, and significant incremental validity. Assessing anxiety longitudinally using a smartphone and following EMA principles is feasible and can be reliable and valid. Studies combining EMA-based anxiety longitudinal assessments with other assessment methods deserve further research and may offer novel insights into human anxiety.