Advancing Clinical, Health and Contemplative Intervention Science through Daily Life Research Methods

Abstract

Daily life research methods are a set of novel, technology-based research methods that make it possible to collect data from participants outside of the laboratory as they go about their normal, everyday lives. These methods show promise for yielding novel advances in the fields of clinical, health and contemplative intervention science. In particular, ecological behavioral observation, a daily life research method that involves the direct observation of real-world social interactions and behaviors, enables new frontiers in the study of a) psychological processes relevant to clinical, health and contemplative science, and b) in how interventions affect real-world behavioral change. This dissertation is comprised of three chapters, each of which is a stand-alone manuscript intended for peer-reviewed publication. In Chapter 1, I provide a methodological guide to the coding and processing of ecological behavioral observation data written for the clinical and health researcher. In Chapter 2, I illustrate how ecological behavioral observation can be applied to basic science research questions about psychological processes relevant to clinical science through a naturalistic observation study of mindfulness in daily life. In Chapter 3, I present the first application of ecological behavioral observation to a contemplative intervention study. Together, these papers aim to establish a program of research for the application of daily life research methods to clinical, health and contemplative intervention science.