Participants photograph their own cues, such as the places where they usually drink or smoke, and their own control scenes with the phone camera. Picture Rating with the participant's own photos then shows these photos.
Picture Rating with the participant's own photos needs a step in which the participant takes the photos first. The photos are taken once and then used by every rating task in the study.
Configure parameters and run an interactive preview exactly as participants will experience it. No data is recorded.
Adjust parameters below, then start the preview on the right.
Task parameters
Participants take their own photos with the phone camera: category A shows their cues, category B their own control scenes. Picture Rating (participant's own photos) then shows these photos. This follows the personal smoking environments paradigm, where smokers photographed 4 places where they smoke and 4 places they visit as often where they don't (Conklin et al., 2010; McClernon et al., 2016). Each photo is cropped to 4:3 and saved at 1200 × 900 pixels on the phone.
A rating task with the same photo set name shows these photos. A study usually needs one set; taking the photos again (e.g. in a later survey) replaces the set.
Category A (cues)
Category B (own controls)
8 photos. Conklin et al. (2010) asked for 4 places per category and used 3, keeping one as a buffer against unclear photos; here the app checks each photo and asks the participant to take an unclear one again, so every photo is used. Places are photographed where the participant is: a participant can stop with “Finish later”, and the photos taken so far stay on the phone until the step is opened again (e.g. a survey they open at each place, or a daily survey for a week, as in Conklin et al., 2010).
The photos stay on the participant's phone (as in the SWiPE app, Manning et al., 2021) and are deleted when they leave the study. The data hold each photo's id, category, size and measures, not the photo. Camera only by default: in the published procedures the photos were taken during the study. The quality check measures brightness (mean grey value), contrast and sharpness on a small copy and warns below 30 and 0.02; no published rule exists, so the warning is only a request to retake, and every photo's measures are stored for your own criteria. The app asks participants not to photograph people or anything that identifies them (Conklin et al., 2022).
Outputs: per photo its id, category, slot, camera or library, size, brightness, contrast and sharpness, any warning the participant overrode and how often it was retaken; and whether the set was finished.
This is a researcher preview. No participant data is recorded.
Simulated participant view
Participants photograph their own cues, such as the places where they usually drink or smoke, and their own control scenes with the phone camera. Picture Rating with the participant's own photos then shows these photos.
No data is recorded
One screen per category with the researcher's instructions and a slot per photo. Each photo is cropped to 4:3 and shown as it will appear in the tasks; the app warns about a very dark or blurred photo, and the participant uses it or takes it again. “Finish later” keeps the photos taken so far for the next time the step opens.
When cue reactivity should be measured with each participant's own cues rather than standard pictures: personal smoking places gave larger craving differences than standard places (Conklin et al., 2010) and engaged the hippocampus where standard places did not (McClernon et al., 2016). Use it before Picture Rating (participant's own photos), in a baseline survey or over the first days of a study.
Not a measure in itself: the step only collects the photos. Not for studies that cannot accept photos of participants' surroundings, and not when the cues must be identical across participants (use a validated picture set). Photos of a participant's own drinks or cigarette brand have no published rating procedure; own places are the established version.
Keep the defaults of the personal smoking environments paradigm: 4 cue places and 4 control places that the participant visits at least weekly, using on most visits (cue) or rarely (control) (Conklin et al., 2010). The step fills in an example for alcohol; write your own instructions for your substance. Places are photographed where the participant is, so offer the step more than once (a survey they open at each place, or a daily survey for about a week, as in Conklin et al., 2010): “Finish later” keeps what they took. Photos stay on the phone unless you turn on Upload copies; in the published procedure staff checked every photo before use (McClernon et al., 2016), which needs copies. Add the photo paragraph of the IRB template to your consent form.
Own photos differ in content, lighting and quality from participant to participant, which standard sets control (Ekhtiari et al., 2022). Brightness, contrast and sharpness are stored for every photo so that they can be used as covariates. The photos are cropped from their centre, which can cut off part of a scene; the participant sees the cropped photo before using it.
Each run of this task records how its times were measured and the conditions of the session, such as screen brightness, battery saving and interruptions. Runs with possible problems are flagged on the Quality tab and in the export.
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