Assessing Life Satisfaction in Everyday Life: An Example of Scale Development for Ecological Momentary Assessment

More and more researchers use Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to answer research questions about psychological processes in daily life, for example how well-being changes across the day. However, research on valid state measures is lagging behind. Only a few instruments have been developed and validated to specifically assess states in EMA studies. Oftentimes, researchers create their own items or adapt existing trait instruments to capture momentary experiences, but do not evaluate their psychometric properties, which leaves the statistical inferences questionable. We present a three-step procedure to facilitate the development of state measures. The first step comprises the definition of the measured construct, intended purpose, and targeted population. In the second step, a candidate pool of items and the response options are generated. In the third step, the psychometric properties of the items are evaluated. Specifically, we describe how to select well-performing items by tailoring a brute-force algorithm to optimize different criteria simultaneously. We further draw attention to important measurement topics such as planned missingness designs and longitudinal measurement invariance. The three steps are illustrated by means of an empirical example, where we execute and document the full procedure to develop a new instrument to measure well-being in everyday life.

随着越来越多的研究者采用生态瞬时评估（EMA）来解答有关日常生活中心理过程的研究问题，例如幸福感在一天中的变化情况，然而，针对有效状态测量的研究却相对滞后。目前，仅有少数工具被开发和验证，以专门评估EMA研究中的状态。通常，研究者会自行创建项目或改编现有的特质工具以捕捉瞬间的体验，但并未对这些项目的心理测量特性进行评估，这导致统计推断的可疑性。我们提出了一种三步法，旨在促进状态测量的开发。第一步包括对测量构念、预期目的和目标人群的定义。第二步，生成一个候选项目池和响应选项。第三步，评估项目的心理测量特性。具体而言，我们描述了如何通过定制暴力算法以优化不同标准的同时选择表现良好的项目。我们进一步关注了重要的测量主题，如计划性缺失设计以及纵向测量不变性。通过一个实证实例，我们展示了这三步，并记录了开发用于测量日常生活中幸福感的全新工具的完整流程。