Participation and Power: A Case Study of Using Ecological Momentary Assessment to Engage Adolescents in Academic Research

TL;DR

This study presents a youth-centered EMA platform designed to enhance adolescent engagement in research, highlighting design choices that influence participation, ethical considerations, and data management in youth studies.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel, teen-focused EMA platform with gamified features and provides guidelines for designing ethical, engaging EMA tools for adolescents.

Findings

Teen engagement was sustained through gamified features and user-centered design.

Technical issues and rigid data structures posed challenges for researchers and raised privacy concerns.

Design choices significantly impacted participant onboarding, engagement, and data interpretation.

Abstract

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is widely used to study adolescents' experiences; yet, how the design of EMA platforms shapes engagement, research practices, and power dynamics in youth studies remains under-examined. We developed a youth-centered EMA platform prioritizing youth engagement and researcher support, and evaluated it through a case study on a longitudinal investigation with adolescent twins focused on mental health and sleep behavior. Interviews with the research team examined how the platform design choices shaped participant onboarding, sustained engagement, risk monitoring, and data interpretation. The app's teen-centered design and gamified features sustained teen engagement, while the web portal streamlined administrative oversight through a centralized dashboard. However, technical instability and rigid data structures created significant hurdles, leading to privacy concerns among parents and complicating the researchers' ability to analyze raw usage metadata. We provide actionable interaction design guidelines for developing EMA platforms that prioritize youth agency, ethical practice, and research goals.