Smartphone monitoring can boost behavioural studie by _ShAnE_StArK_ 2015/12/27 14:13
Interpreting the data collected from
volunteers’ own smartphone — which has
the potential to emulate randomised trials
— can boost research into human
behaviour, finds a new study.
Fani Tsapeli from the University of
Birmingham, and her colleague and Mirco
Musolesi from the University College
London used user-generated data,
harvested from their phones to evaluate
the cause of increased stress levels of
participants.
Most of the earlier research works relying
on smartphones focused on detecting
factors in the features extracted from
smartphone data. But that pure
correlation analysis did not provide for a
sufficient understanding of human
behaviour.
Therefore, the study authors tried to
identify factors that could be at the root
cause of issues revolving around health
and well-being.
In this study, the authors used data from
a research project at Dartmouth College,
Hanover, US, called StudentLife. It
included information on participants’
location taken from raw GPS data, which
helped determine whether they were
working or socialising.
Also included was data on activity levels,
like running, walking or travelling on public
transport, inferred from participants’ raw
accelerometer data.
They found that exercising and spending
time outside the home and working
environment have a positive effect on
participants’ stress levels.
By contrast, they found that reduced
working hours only slightly impact stress.
The conclusions cannot be extended to
the general population due to the small
sample size. But the approach has been
validated and shows great promise for
further studies.....
Interpreting the data collected from
volunteers’ own smartphone — which has
the potential to emulate randomised trials
— can boost research into human
behaviour, finds a new study.
Fani Tsapeli from the University of
Birmingham, and her colleague and Mirco
Musolesi from the University College
London used user-generated data,
harvested from their phones to evaluate
the cause of increased stress levels of
participants.
Most of the earlier research works relying
on smartphones focused on detecting
factors in the features extracted from
smartphone data. But that pure
correlation analysis did not provide for a
sufficient understanding of human
behaviour.
Therefore, the study authors tried to
identify factors that could be at the root
cause of issues revolving around health
and well-being.
In this study, the authors used data from
a research project at Dartmouth College,
Hanover, US, called StudentLife. It
included information on participants’
location taken from raw GPS data, which
helped determine whether they were
working or socialising.
Also included was data on activity levels,
like running, walking or travelling on public
transport, inferred from participants’ raw
accelerometer data.
They found that exercising and spending
time outside the home and working
environment have a positive effect on
participants’ stress levels.
By contrast, they found that reduced
working hours only slightly impact stress.
The conclusions cannot be extended to
the general population due to the small
sample size. But the approach has been
validated and shows great promise for
further studies.....
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