Prompt frequency, questionnaire length, and study duration: the design trade-offs that shape ESM data quality
Three upstream design choices determine how much burden an ESM participant carries and how much usable data a study produces: how many prompts arrive per day, how many items each prompt asks, and how many days the protocol runs. This post reviews what the evidence says each choice costs and buys — including the experimental finding that questionnaire length, not sampling frequency, is what degrades data quality — and covers the response window as a fourth, separate decision.
SMAAT Team
22 min read
