On the use of personalization to enhance compliance in experience sampling

This paper argues that allowing personalization can increase respondent adherence in experience sampling studies. We report a one week long field experiment (N=36), which compared response rates when respondents select the times at which they are prompted to report in an experience sampling protocol (experimental group), versus the situation where these times are selected by the experimenter (control group). Results showed that participants who could choose their time slots showed a significantly higher response rate than participants who received the questions on preset time slots (p=0.002). There was no difference in response rates for different times of the day. Social influence, as permitted through the personalization process is offered as one of the explanations for enhancing compliance to the experience sampling probes. Future research needs to establish whether this or other practical explanations regarding respondent convenience explain the increased adherence and whether the found effect can be sustained for longer studies.