Question Modules

Items that detect inattentive or careless responding. Insert one or two into a longer battery — not more, and not in every beep of an ESM protocol, where they irritate participants and become their own source of dropout.

A 4-item momentary sleep quality battery covering quality, duration, latency, and daytime restoration. Suitable for daily diary and EMA protocols.

The minimal demographic set most studies report: age, sex, gender, country and language. Age and date of birth are both included — pick whichever your ethics approval allows, you rarely want both.

Phone platform, wearable ownership, screen time and notification habits. Worth collecting in any smartphone study — notification responsiveness and platform are the two variables most likely to explain compliance differences between participants.

A standard momentary assessment battery covering mood valence, arousal, stress, social context, and current activity.

The ONS Census 2021 ethnic group classification for England and Wales: 19 response options nested within five high-level groups. Use the full detailed list where sample size allows and collapse to the five high-level groups for analysis.

Closing battery for the end of a study: overall experience, technical problems, self-reported data quality and willingness to be re-contacted. The technical-problems item is the fastest way to find out that notifications silently failed for a subset of your sample.

A fuller context battery than EMA-Core: physical location, social company, activity and its pleasantness, plus consumption and phone use since the previous beep. Designed to be subset — most protocols use three or four of these, not all ten.

How often a person feels in harmony with the needs of future generations, 0–10. A sense of connection to ancestors and descendants features in many Indigenous well-being frameworks (for example the Māori notion of being a good ancestor), and several OECD countries have legislation on the well-being of future generations. Few measures exist; the OECD offers this item in an experimental question bank.

Self-reported health history: general health, chronic conditions, medication, anthropometrics and smoking. Health data is special-category under GDPR Art. 9 — every item here is flagged accordingly and needs an explicit lawful basis, not consent-by-default.

Relationship status, household composition and living situation — the background variables most often used to contextualise social ESM data.

An evaluation of how well one's family is doing, 0–10, with a follow-up on which groups of people the person counted as family. Developed for Te Kupenga, Statistics New Zealand's survey of Māori well-being (where it asked about whānau), and used in the New Zealand General Social Survey. Highly correlated with life satisfaction but distinct in its drivers. One of the OECD's experimental measures: the OECD asks data producers to field and publish tests of them.

The standard European alternative to a race/ethnicity question. Most EU ethics committees discourage collecting racial or ethnic origin directly, and official European statistics instead derive migration background from country of birth of the respondent and their parents. Note that migration background can function as a proxy for ethnic origin — treat the derived variable with Art. 9 caution even though the individual items are not themselves special-category data.

The German official definition of migration background: a person has a Migrationshintergrund if they, or at least one parent, were not born with German citizenship. Items carry German translations — switch the language selector to Deutsch before inserting to get the German wording.

A 5-item EMA battery assessing the quality of current or most recent social interactions, covering presence, pleasantness, understanding, conflict, and social connection.

Where the person is (including how they are travelling), what they are mainly doing, who they are with, and whether they are interacting with anyone. Options map to HETUS 2018 codes, so answers can be compared with official time-use statistics. Pair with the OECD time-use pleasantness item or momentary affect.

The OECD's primary measure of subjective well-being (life satisfaction) and its eudaimonic measure (the things one does in life are worthwhile), each on a 0–10 scale. About 60 seconds. Best asked at baseline and exit, early in the survey and not straight after questions on income, health or other sensitive topics. Asked word for word, the answers are comparable with national statistics: close to 90% of OECD countries collect the life-satisfaction item. The OECD core module has a third item on pain over the past 7 days, which is not included in this entry.

Satisfaction with the amount of time for things one likes doing, with the quality of the local environment, and with one's job, each on a 0–10 scale. These are items 8–10 of the OECD's ten-item domain evaluation module; its items 1–7 come from the Personal Wellbeing Index and are not included in this entry. Ask the job item only of respondents who are employed.

Two of the five constructs in the OECD eudaimonia module: a sense that the things one does are worthwhile, and autonomy (being able to do the things one really wants and values). Both on 0–10 scales. The module's items on accomplishment, self-esteem and personal growth are not included in this entry. The worthwhile item is also an OECD core item; ask it only once.

Life satisfaction now and one year ago, and hope for the future, each on a 0–10 scale. About 60 seconds. The first item is the OECD core life-satisfaction item; ask it only once if the survey also uses the core questions. If space is short, keep the one-year-ago item over the hope item.

The OECD's recommended affect question for time-use diaries: how pleasant or unpleasant a moment was, from −3 to +3. Designed to be answered for each diary episode, as soon after it as possible; in an experience-sampling study it can be asked about the moment of each prompt, alongside where the person is, what they are doing and who they are with.

Measures how heavy the protocol felt and whether taking part changed what was being measured. Reactivity is the standard threat to validity in ESM and is almost never measured — these items make it reportable. Pairs with the Burden Centre's observed-compliance estimates.

A brief momentary and retrospective physical activity assessment battery for EMA use, covering recent activity level, type, and perceived exertion.

US federal standard for race and ethnicity, following the 2024 revision of OMB Statistical Policy Directive No. 15. The 2024 revision replaced the old two-question format with a single combined question and added 'Middle Eastern or North African' as a distinct category — do not use the superseded 1997 wording.

Asks participants directly about the quality of their own answers. Surprisingly effective and much less irritating than attention checks — participants are largely honest when told their answer will not affect payment. Place at the end of a session.

A single general self-assessment of mental health, from excellent to poor. Part of the OECD's population mental health module.

Education, employment, occupation and income position. Education follows ISCED 2011 and occupation follows ISCO-08 major groups, so results map onto official statistics rather than ad-hoc categories. Income is asked relative to the country average to avoid currency and cost-of-living problems.

The six-item UN standard for identifying disability in surveys. Asks about functional difficulty in six core domains rather than asking respondents to self-identify as disabled, which is why it works cross-culturally.