Ecological Momentary Assessment of Daily Activities in Individuals With Neurological Disorders: Scoping Review.
Eva Delooz, Barbara Piškur, Aki Rintala and 2 others
Only 20 studies (2012–2024) have used real-time smartphone prompts to track daily activities in neurological patients.
Most ask only 'what are you doing' without capturing meaning or context, and no agreed-upon best design exists.
Key findings
1Only 20 studies published between 2012 and 2024 used EMA to assess daily activities in neurological populations, representing 1128 participants with acknowledged overlap. Stroke was the most common condition (11 of 20 studies); the rest covered acquired brain injury, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson disease, tinnitus, hereditary spastic paraplegia, and multiple sclerosis.
2Daily activity questions were almost universally closed-format: 19 of 20 studies used multiple-choice options and the verb 'doing' to frame the question. In 11 of 20 studies, the exact wording of the activity question was not reported in the manuscript or supplementary materials.
3Adherence to EMA protocols ranged from approximately 55% to over 90%, with most studies reporting above 70%. No significant association was found between the total number of assessments and adherence (P = .66), and the authors state the evidence is insufficient to identify an optimal protocol design.
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What it does not show
Only 20 studies were included, and the authors acknowledge that several likely drew from overlapping participant cohorts, so the true number of independent perspectives is smaller than 20. Stroke accounted for 11 of 20 studies; other neurological conditions (Parkinson disease, MS, hereditary spastic paraplegia, tinnitus) were each represented by a single study, so findings cannot be generalised across conditions. Eleven of 20 studies did not report the exact wording of their daily-activity question, making it impossible to compare what was actually asked across studies. The search was limited to EMA-related terminology in titles and abstracts; studies using similar methods under different names may have been missed, and no reference-list or citation-tracking search was performed. Fifteen of 20 studies were conducted at home, so the findings may not apply to inpatient or institutional settings where environmental and organisational factors are more prominent. The regression analyses were explicitly exploratory, based on a small number of heterogeneous studies with incomplete adherence reporting, and should not be read as evidence of causal relationships. The PEO coding was applied analytically by separating interrelated domains, which the authors acknowledge is a simplification of a model that treats person, environment, and occupation as dynamically interacting.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest were declared.
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