Digital self-report instruments for repeated measurement of mental health in the general adult population: a protocol for a systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: Digital technologies present tremendous opportunities for enabling long-term measurement of mental health in the general population. Emerging studies have established preliminary efficacy of collecting self-report data digitally. However, a key challenge when developing a new self-report instrument is navigating the abundance of existing instruments to select relevant constructs for measurements. This review is a precursor to developing a novel future integrated digital instrument for repeated measurements. We interrogate the literature as the first step towards optimal measurement of the multifaceted mental health concept, in the context of digital repeated measurement. This review aims to identify (1) digital self-report instruments administered repeatedly to measure the mental health of the general adult population; (2) their structure and format; (3) their psychometric properties; (4) their usage in empirical studies; and (5) the constructs these instruments were designed to measure (as characterised in the original publication), and the constructs the instruments have been used to measure in the identified empirical studies. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Five major electronic databases will be searched. Studies administering mental health instruments (in English) repeatedly to community dwellers in the general adult population are eligible. A reviewer will preliminarily screen for eligible studies. Then, two reviewers will independently screen the full text of the eligible articles and extract data. Both reviewers will resolve any disagreement through discussion or with a third reviewer. After the data extraction, a reviewer will manually search for the structure, format, psychometric properties and the original constructs these instruments were developed to measure. This review will synthesise the results in a narrative approach. The reporting in this review will be guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not required as no data will be collected. Findings of the systematic review will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42022306547.

What can we experience and report on a rapidly presented image? Intersubjective measures of specificity of freely reported contents of consciousness.

Background: A majority of previous studies appear to support a view that human observers can only perceive coarse information from a natural scene image when it is presented rapidly (<100ms, masked). In these studies, participants were often forced to choose an answer from options that experimenters preselected. These options can underestimate what participants experience and can report on it. The current study aims to introduce a novel methodology to investigate how detailed information participants can report after briefly seeing a natural scene image.     Methods: We used a novel free-report paradigm to examine what people can freely report following a rapidly presented natural scene image (67/133/267ms, masked). N = 670 online participants typed up to five words to report what they saw in the image together with confidence of the respective responses. We developed a novel index, Intersubjective Agreement (IA). IA quantifies how specifically the response words were used to describe the target image, with a high value meaning the word is not often reported for other images. Importantly, IA eliminates the need for experimenters to preselect response options. Results: The words with high IA values are often something detailed (e.g., a small object) in a particular image. With IA, unlike commonly believed, we demonstrated that participants reported highly specific and detailed aspects of the briefly (even at 67ms, masked) shown image. Further, IA is positively correlated with confidence, indicating metacognitive conscious access to the reported aspects of the image. Conclusion: These new findings challenge the dominant view that the content of rapid scene experience is limited to global and coarse gist. Our novel paradigm opens a door to investigate various contents of consciousness with a free-report paradigm.