Data Collection Using Wearable Devices: Challenges and Opportunities |
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| Coordinator 1 | Dr Heidi Guyer (RTI International) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Florian Keusch (University of Mannheim) |
| Coordinator 3 | Professor Bella Struminskaya (Utrecht University) |
The use of wearable devices, such as fitness trackers, to track human behavior as well as external environmental factors has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. A recent Google Scholar search showed a 10-fold increase in research article citations for “wearables AND adults” between 2005 and 2024. The use of wearable devices for data collection has expanded from use with adults to adolescent and youth populations, and specific at-risk subgroups of the population such as caregivers, clinical populations, military populations, and others. While the field was initially dominated by expensive research-grade devices, the augmented capabilities of consumer-grade devices, accompanied by the lower cost and data accessibility, has allowed for the integration into data collection plans for an expanding field of researchers. Wearables are used to measure physical activity, biorhythms such as pulse, heart rate variability and temperature, sleep and other external factors about the environment. The increase in consumer usage may translate to increased consent and compliance rates for research participation. However, the field continues to grapple with several methodological challenges related to data quality and representation of the data collected. For this session, we invite methodological contributions dealing with various challenges of collecting data from wearable devices, including differences in consent and participation rates by subgroups, scalability of research designs, the integration of additional touch points such as EMAs, accessing data from user- owned devices (BYOD) versus distributed study devices, usability and design features, data harmonization across device makes and models, and measurement differences related to sociodemographic characteristics. With the rapid expansion of wearable devices in survey research, this session will allow researchers to share their findings and lessons learned to date.