Applications of the experience sampling method (ESM) in paediatric healthcare: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: With the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) participants are asked to provide self-reports of their symptoms, feelings, thoughts and behaviours in daily life. This preregistered systematic review assessed how ESM is being used to monitor emotional well-being, somatic health, fatigue and pain in children and adolescents with a chronic somatic illness. METHODS: Databases were searched from inception. Studies were selected if they included children or adolescents aged 0-25 years with a chronic somatic illness and used ESM focussing on mental health or psychosocial wellbeing, biopsychosocial factors and/or somatic health. Two reviewers extracted data of the final 47 papers, describing 48 studies. RESULTS: Most studies evaluated what factors influence medical or psychological symptoms and how symptoms influence each other. Another common purpose was to study the feasibility of ESM or ESM as part of an app or intervention. Study methods were heterogeneous and most studies lack adequate reporting of ESM applications and results. CONCLUSIONS: While ESM holds great potential for providing results and feedback to patients and caregivers, little use is being made of this option. Future studies should consider what they report in their studies, conduct a priori power analyses and how ESM can be embedded in clinical practice. IMPACT: While ESM has many clinical applications, it is currently mostly used for research purposes. Current studies using ESM are heterogeneous and lack consistent, high-quality reporting. There is great potential in ESM for providing patients and parents with personalised feedback.

Within-family associations of parent-adolescent relationship quality and adolescent affective well-being.

BACKGROUND: Parent-adolescent relationship quality is theorized to be an important correlate of adolescent affective well-being. Little is known about the within-family processes underlying parent-adolescent relationship quality and affective well-being over a period of months. This three-wave, preregistered study examined within- and between-family associations between parent-adolescent relationship quality (support and conflict) and adolescent well-being (negative and positive affect). In addition, we examined whether the associations differed between mothers and fathers, and for adolescents' affective well-being in different social contexts (at home, at school, with peers). METHODS: The sample consisted of 244 Dutch adolescents (61.5% girls; age range: 12-17 years; mean age = 13.8 years). Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were used. RESULTS: At the between-family level, higher levels of support and lower levels of conflict were associated with higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect. At the within-family level, increases in support and decreases in conflict were concurrently associated with increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect. More parent-adolescent conflict than typical also predicted increases in negative affect, 3 months later, and more negative affect and less positive affect than typical predicted increased conflict, 3 months later. These within-family effects were largely similar for fathers and mothers. Associations for conflict occurred through bidirectional processes: Parent-adolescent conflict shaped and was shaped by adolescents' emotions at home, at school, and with peers. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that parent-adolescent relationship quality (especially conflict) and adolescent affective well-being cofluctuate and predict each other over time within families.

Like No Other? A Family-Specific Network Approach to Parenting Adolescents.

Numerous theories suggest that parents and adolescents influence each other in diverse ways; however, whether these influences differ between subgroups or are unique to each family remains uncertain. Therefore, this study explored whether data-driven subgroups of families emerged that exhibited a similar daily interplay between parenting and adolescent affective well-being. To do so, Subgrouping Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (S-GIMME) was used to estimate family-specific dynamic network models, containing same- and next-day associations among five parenting practices (i.e., warmth, autonomy support, psychological control, strictness, monitoring) and adolescent positive and negative affect. These family-specific networks were estimated for 129 adolescents (Mage = 13.3, SDage = 1.2, 64% female, 87% Dutch), who reported each day on parenting and their affect for 100 consecutive days. The findings of S-GIMME did not identify data-driven subgroups sharing similar parenting-affect associations. Instead, each family displayed a unique pattern of temporal associations between the different practices and adolescent affect. Thus, the ways in which parenting practices were related to adolescents' affect in everyday life were family specific.

A moment of autonomy support brightens adolescents' mood: Autonomy support, psychological control and adolescent affect in everyday life.

This experience sampling study examined whether autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling interactions with parents are intertwined with adolescents' momentary affect. For 7 days (in 2020), 143 adolescents (Mage = 15.82; SDage = 1.75; 64% girls; 95% European, 1% African, 3% unknown) reported 5 or 6 times a day how they felt and how interactions with parents were experienced. Preregistered dynamic structural equation models on 1439 (including 532 adjacent) parent-adolescent interactions revealed significant within-family associations: Adolescents experienced more positive affect during and following autonomy-supportive interactions, and vice versa. Adolescents felt more negative affect during and 3 h before psychologically controlling interactions. Between-family associations showed significant linkages between parenting and affect. These findings show that a moment of autonomy support can alter adolescents' everyday well-being.

Better, for worse, or both? Testing environmental sensitivity models with parenting at the level of individual families.

According to environmental sensitivity models, children vary in responsivity to parenting. However, different models propose different patterns, with responsivity to primarily: (1) adverse parenting (adverse sensitive); or (2) supportive parenting (vantage sensitive); or (3) to both (differentially susceptible). This preregistered study tested whether these three responsivity patterns coexist. We used intensive longitudinal data of Dutch adolescents (N = 256, Mage = 14.8, 72% female) who bi-weekly reported on adverse and supportive parenting and their psychological functioning (tmean = 17.7, tmax = 26). Dynamic Structural Equation Models (DSEM) indeed revealed differential parenting effects. As hypothesized, we found that all three responsivity patterns coexisted in our sample: 5% were adverse sensitive, 3% vantage sensitive, and 26% differentially susceptible. No adolescent appeared unsusceptible, however. Instead, we labeled 28% as unperceptive, because they did not perceive any changes in parenting and scored lower on trait environmental sensitivity than others. Furthermore, unexpected patterns emerged, with 37% responding contrary to parenting theories (e.g., decreased psychological functioning after more parental support). Sensitivity analyses with concurrent effects and parent-reported parenting were performed. Overall, findings indicate that theorized responsivity-to-parenting patterns might coexist in the population, and that there are other, previously undetected patterns that go beyond environmental sensitivity models.

Testing transactional processes between parental support and adolescent depressive symptoms: From a daily to a biennial timescale.

Transactional processes between parental support and adolescents' depressive symptoms might differ in the short term versus long term. Therefore, this multi-sample study tested bidirectional within-family associations between perceived parental support and depressive symptoms in adolescents with datasets with varying measurement intervals: Daily (N = 244, Mage = 13.8 years, 38% male), bi-weekly (N = 256, Mage = 14.4 years, 29% male), three-monthly (N = 245, Mage = 13.9 years, 38% male), annual (N = 1,664, Mage = 11.1 years, 51% male), and biennial (N = 502, Mage = 13.8 years, 48% male). Preregistered random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) showed negative between- and within-family correlations. Moreover, although the preregistered models showed no within-family lagged effect from perceived parental support to adolescent depressive symptoms at any timescale, an exploratory model demonstrated a negative lagged effect at a biennial timescale with the annual dataset. Concerning the reverse within-family lagged effect, increases in adolescent depressive symptoms predicted decreases in perceived parental support 2 weeks and 3 months later (relationship erosion effect). Most cross-lagged effects were not moderated by adolescent sex or neuroticism trait level. Thus, the findings mostly support adolescent-driven effects at understudied timescales and illustrate that within-family lagged effects do not generalize across timescales.

Quaranteens: Prepandemic relationship quality and changes in adolescent internalizing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This preregistered longitudinal study examined changes in adolescents' depressive and anxiety symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using latent additive piece-wise growth models. It also assessed whether support from and conflict with mothers, fathers, siblings, and best friends explained heterogeneity in change patterns. One hundred and ninety-two Dutch adolescents (Mean age: 14.3 years; 68.8% female) completed online biweekly questionnaires for a year (November 2019-October 2020), consisting of a prepandemic, lockdown, and reopening phase. Depressive symptoms increased following the lockdown and decreased upon reopening. Anxiety symptoms showed an immediate decrease followed by a gradual increase in the reopening phase. Prepandemic family and best friend support and conflict did not explain heterogeneity in depressive and anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daily affect intensity and variability of adolescents and their parents before and during a COVID-19 lockdown.

INTRODUCTION: The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic may have a prolonged impact on people's lives, with multiple waves of infections and lockdowns, but how a lockdown may alter emotional functioning is still hardly understood. METHODS: In this 100-daily diaries study, we examined how to affect intensity and variability of adolescents (N = 159, Mage = 13.3, 61.6% female) and parents (N = 159, Mage = 45.3, 79.9% female) changed after the onset and during (>50 days) the second COVID-19 lockdown in the Netherlands, using preregistered piecewise growth models. RESULTS: We found only an unexpected increase in parents' positive affect intensity after the lockdown onset, but no immediate changes in negative affect intensity or variability. However, both adolescents and parents reported gradual increases in negative affect intensity and variability as the lockdown prolonged. Lockdown effects did not differ between adolescents and parents. However, within groups, individuals differed. The individual differences in the effects were partly explained by life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and self-reported lockdown impact. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these findings suggests that a lockdown triggers changes in daily affective well-being especially as the lockdown prolongs. Individual differences in the effects indicate heterogeneity in the impact of the lockdown on daily affect that was partly explained by baseline life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. However, more knowledge on the causes of this heterogeneity is needed to be able to increase resilience to lockdown effects in the population.

When Too Much Help is of No Help: Mothers' and Fathers' Perceived Overprotective Behavior and (Mal)Adaptive Functioning in Adolescents.

Although parental overprotection is theorized to have lasting negative effects throughout a child's life, there is limited empirical evidence available on its long-term significance on adolescent well-being. This preregistered, three-wave longitudinal study investigated the association of maternal and paternal perceived overprotection in early adolescence with the development of (mal)adaptive psychological, academic, and social functioning throughout adolescence. Data (N = 2229; 50.7% girls) from the longitudinal TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) in the Netherlands were used (Mage T1 = 11.11, T2 = 13.57, T3 = 16.28). At T1, adolescents reported on their mothers' and fathers' overprotection. From T1 to T3 adolescents and teachers reported about internalizing problems, academic achievement, prosocial, and antisocial behavior. The results showed concurrent associations between higher levels of perceived overprotection and higher levels of internalizing problems, antisocial behaviors, and (after controlling for parental warmth and rejection) lower levels of academic achievement. Perceived overprotection was positively associated with decreased internalizing problems over time. This longitudinal association disappeared after controlling for baseline levels of internalizing problems, suggesting that this result was less robust than expected. Mothers and fathers did not differ in their associations between perceived overprotection and (mal)adaptive functioning. The findings showed that perceived overprotection is mainly concurrently associated with (mal)adaptive adolescent functioning. Future research recommendations are discussed in terms of stability and bidirectional relations.

Parent-adolescent interaction quality and adolescent affect-An experience sampling study on effect heterogeneity.

Person-environment interactions might ultimately drive longer term development. This experience sampling study (Data collection: 2019/20 the Netherlands) assessed short-term linkages between parent-adolescent interaction quality and affect during 2281 interactions of 124 adolescents (Mage  = 15.80, SDage  = 1.69, 59% girls, 92% Dutch, Education: 25% low, 31% middle, 35% high, 9% other). Adolescents reported on parent-adolescent interaction quality (i.e., warmth and conflict) and momentary positive and negative affect five to six times a day, for 14 days. Preregistered dynamic structural equation models (DSEM) revealed within-family associations between parent-adolescent interaction quality and adolescent affect (concurrently: r = -.22 to .39; lagged effects: ß = -.17 to .15). These effects varied significantly between families. These findings stress the need for more person-specific research on parenting processes.

Promoting Daily Well-being in Adolescents using mHealth.

Adolescents are at increased risk for developing mental health problems. The Grow It! app is an mHealth intervention aimed at preventing mental health problems through improving coping by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-inspired challenges as well as self-monitoring of emotions through Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). Yet, little is known about daily changes in well-being and coping during a stressful period, like the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study aimed to elucidate daily changes in positive and negative affect, and adaptive coping, and to better understand the within-person's mechanisms of the Grow It! app. The sample consisted of 12-25-year old Dutch adolescents in two independent cohorts (cohort 1: N = 476, Mage = 16.24, 76.1% female, 88.7% Dutch; cohort 2: N = 814, Mage = 18.45, 82.8% female, 97.2% Dutch). ESM were used to measure daily positive and negative affect and coping (cohort 1: 42 days, 210 assessments per person; cohort 2: 21 days, 105 assessments). The results showed that, on average, adolescents decreased in daily positive affect and adaptive coping, and increased in their experienced negative affect. A positive relation between adaptive coping and positive affect was found, although independent of the CBT-based challenges. Latent class analysis identified two heterogeneous trajectories for both positive and negative affect, indicating that the majority of participants with low to moderate-risk on developing mental health problems were likely to benefit from the Grow It! app.

Grumpy or depressed? Disentangling typically developing adolescent mood from prodromal depression using experience sampling methods.

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed at differentiating normative developmental turmoil from prodromal depressive symptoms in adolescence. METHOD: Negative and positive mood (daily) in different contexts (friends, home, school), and (subsequent) depressive symptoms were assessed in Dutch adolescents. RESULTS & CONCLUSION: Mixture modeling on one cross-sectional study, using a newly developed questionnaire (CSEQ; subsample 1a; n = 571; girls 55.9%; Mage = 14.17) and two longitudinal datasets with Experience Sampling Methods data (subsample 1b: n = 241; Mage = 13.81; 62.2% girls, sample 2: n = 286; 59.7% girls; Mage = 14.19) revealed three mood profiles: 18-24% "happy", 43-53% "typically developing", and 27-38% "at-risk". Of the "at-risk" profile between 12.5% and 25% of the adolescents scored above the clinical cut-off for depression. These mood profiles predicted later depressive symptoms, while controlling for earlier symptoms. In subsample 1b, parents were not always aware of the mental health status of their adolescent.

The Link between Parental Support and Adolescent Negative Mood in Daily Life: between-Person Heterogeneity in within-Person Processes.

Lack of parental support is related to more adolescent negative mood. However, little is known about how fluctuations of parental support relate to fluctuations of negative mood within adolescents in daily life. The current study aimed to elucidate these processes at a day to day micro-level and examined to which extent adolescents would differ in the association between perceived parental support and adolescent negative mood. The sample consisted of 242 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 13.82, 63.2% female) who completed ecological momentary assessments of 3 weeks 3 months apart. Results from the multilevel regression analyses showed that, on average, adolescents experienced higher levels of negative mood on days when they perceived their parents to be less supportive. Substantial individual differences were found in this association, however, these were partially explained by the level of depressive symptoms and perceived parental intrusiveness. These findings suggest that advice on parental support should be tailored to the unique characteristics of the adolescent.

Transactional Links Between Social Anxiety Symptoms and Parenting Across Adolescence: Between- and Within-Person Associations.

This 4-year longitudinal multi-informant study examined between- and within-person associations between adolescent social anxiety symptoms and parenting (parental psychological control and autonomy support). A community sample of 819 adolescents (46.1% girls; Mage T1  = 13.4 years) reported annually on social anxiety symptoms and both adolescents and mothers reported on parenting. Between-person associations suggested that adolescent social anxiety symptoms were associated with higher adolescent- and mother-reported psychological control and lower mother-reported autonomy support. At the within-person level, however, mothers reported lower psychological control and higher autonomy support after periods with higher adolescent social anxiety symptoms. Our findings illustrate the importance of distinguishing among between-person and within-person associations and including perceptions of both dyad members in longitudinal research concerning parenting and adolescent mental health.

Family Functioning and Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: Disentangling between-, and Within-Family Associations.

Adolescence is often a period of onset for internalizing and externalizing problems. At the same time, adolescent maturation and increasing autonomy from parents push for changes in family functioning. Even though theoretically expected links among the changes in family functioning and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems exist, studies examining this link on the within-family level are lacking. This longitudinal, pre-registered, and open-science study, examined the within-family dynamic longitudinal associations among family functioning, and internalizing and externalizing problems. Greek adolescents (N = 480, Mage = 15.73, 47.9% girls, at Wave 1) completed self-report questionnaires, three times in 12 months. Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM) were applied; such models explicitly disentangle between-family differences from within-family processes, thereby offering a more stringent examination of within-family hypotheses. Results showed that family functioning was not significantly associated with internalizing or externalizing problems, on the within-family level. Also, alternative standard Cross-Lagged Panel Models (CLPM) were applied; such models have been recently criticized for failing to explicitly disentangle between-family variance from within-family variance, but they have been the standard approach to investigating questions of temporal ordering. Results from these analyses offered evidence that adolescents with higher internalizing and externalizing problems compared to their peers, tended to be those who later experienced worse family functioning, but not vice versa. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

A Review of Current Ambulatory Assessment Studies in Adolescent Samples and Practical Recommendations.

The use of ambulatory assessment (AA) and related methods (experience sampling, ecological momentary assessment) has greatly increased within the field of adolescent psychology. In this guide, we describe important practices for conducting AA studies in adolescent samples. To better understand how researchers have been implementing AA study designs, we present a review of 23 AA studies that were conducted in adolescent samples from 2017. Results suggest that there is heterogeneity in how AA studies in youth are conducted and reported. Based on these insights, we provide recommendations with regard to participant recruitment, sampling scheme, item selection, power analysis, and software choice. Further, we provide a checklist for reporting on AA studies in adolescent samples that can be used as a guideline for future studies.

Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Privacy Invasion and Adolescent Secrecy: An Illustration of Simpson's Paradox.

Adolescents' secrecy is intertwined with perception of parents' behaviors as acts of privacy invasion. It is currently untested, however, how this transactional process operates at the within-person level-where these causal processes take place. Dutch adolescents (n = 244, Mage  = 13.84, 38.50% boys) reported three times on perceived parental privacy invasion and secrecy. Cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) confirmed earlier findings. Privacy invasion predicted increased secrecy, but a reverse effect was found from increased secrecy to increased privacy invasion. Controlling for confounding positive group-level associations with a novel random intercept CLPM, negative within-person associations were found. Higher levels of secrecy predicted lower levels of privacy invasive behaviors at the within-person level. These opposing findings within- versus between-persons illustrate a Simpson's paradox.

The interplay of parental monitoring and socioeconomic status in predicting minor delinquency between and within adolescents.

This six-wave multi-informant longitudinal study on Dutch adolescents (N = 824; age 12-18) examined the interplay of socioeconomic status with parental monitoring in predicting minor delinquency. Fixed-effects negative binomial regression analyses revealed that this interplay is different within adolescents across time than between adolescents. Between individuals, parental solicitation and control were not significantly associated with delinquency after controlling for SES: Adolescents whose parents exercised more monitoring did not offend less than others. Within individuals, higher levels of parental control were unexpectedly associated with more delinquency, but this relation was dependent on SES: Low-SES adolescents, but not high-SES adolescents, offended more during periods in which their parents exercised more control than during other periods with less control. In contrast to earlier work, this finding suggests that monitoring could be least effective when needed most. Low-SES parents might not use monitoring effectively and become overcontrolling when their child goes astray.

Music Preferences, Friendship, and Externalizing Behavior in Early Adolescence: A SIENA Examination of the Music Marker Theory Using the SNARE Study.

Music Marker Theory posits that music is relevant for the structuring of peer groups and that rock, urban, or dance music preferences relate to externalizing behavior. The present study tested these hypotheses, by investigating the role of music preference similarity in friendship selection and the development of externalizing behavior, while taking the effects of friends' externalizing behavior into account. Data were used from the first three waves of the SNARE (Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early adolescence) study (N = 1144; 50% boys; M age = 12.7; SD = 0.47), including students who entered the first-year of secondary school. Two hypotheses were tested. First, adolescents were expected to select friends based both on a similarity in externalizing behavior and music genre preference. Second, a preference for rock, urban, or dance, music types was expected to predict the development of externalizing behavior, even when taking friends' influence on externalizing behavior into account. Stochastic Actor-Based Modeling indicated that adolescents select their friends based on both externalizing behavior and highbrow music preference. Moreover, both friends' externalizing behavior and a preference for dance music predicted the development of externalizing behavior. Intervention programs might focus on adolescents with dance music preferences.

Adolescent Abstention From Delinquency: Examining the Mediating Role of Time Spent With (Delinquent) Peers.

Research consistently identifies a group of adolescents who refrain from minor delinquency entirely. Known as abstainers, studying these adolescents is an underexplored approach to understanding adolescent minor delinquency. In this paper, we tested hypotheses regarding adolescent delinquency abstention derived from the developmental taxonomy model and social control theory in 497 adolescents (283 boys) aged 13-18 comparing three groups of adolescents: abstainers, experimenters, and a delinquent group. We found that the relation between adolescent abstention and personal characteristics (i.e., conscientiousness and anxiety) was (partially) mediated by the amount of time spent with peers. Furthermore, the level of best friend delinquency moderated the relation between time spent with peers and delinquency abstention. Results support aspects of both theoretical frameworks.