Stress Assessment in Daily Life Using the Experience Sampling Method

Although stress has been implicated in a broad range of somatic and mental illnesses, how this phenomenon puts individuals at risk is still unclear. In order to better understand the relationship between stress and well-being, accurate assessment of stress is crucial. Subjective appraisal and experience are key aspects of stress, but standard questionnaires suffer from recall bias and standardized stress tasks lack ecological validity. The experience sampling method (ESM) overcomes these issues and allows for in-the-moment assessment of subjective state, behavior, and current context, in everyday life. ESM is a structured diary technique where repeated measurements over the day, and over days, using brief questionnaires provide insight into daily life. Stress can be assessed directly or indirectly by inquiring about momentary levels of experienced distress or overall negative affect, respectively. Alternatively, stress has often been assessed through appraisal of the current activity, social situation, work situation, or a recent event. Another main strength of the ESM stress assessment is that it can be modeled in real-time with respect to other momentary measures. Temporal stress dynamics have been operationalized as stress reactivity (the changes in affect or symptoms in response to stress), stress recovery (the return to baseline following stress), and network models. In this chapter, we describe some of the most common ESM measures of subjective stress, and briefly discuss their usefulness and methodological characteristics.