WHALE

Social Sensing environment with Experience Sampling capabilities.

Important

Wenn Sie auf der Suche nach Informationen zur Teilnahme an der aktuell laufenden WHALE-Studie sind, besuchen Sie bitte diese Webseite.

If you're looking for how to participate in the WHALE study, please follow this link (in German) for information on how to enrol in the study.

Components

• Android App: The app that records sensor data. Needs to be installed on participant's devices
• Backend: The backend that allows for data storage. Deployed on a server.

Note

See the component's respective READMEs for more information.

Interaction Bubble & NotificationTriggers

We want to track if an interaction is happening and relying on sensors alone would not be sufficient. We use the following approach:

• a sticky and unobtrusive widget flows around the screen based on conditions defined as a NotificationTrigger
  • the widget shows questions from a questionnaire (see Experience Sampling)
• rules defined in the displayed questionnaire determine if a new NotificationTrigger is added, or another full questionnaire is shown
• this setup allows for conditional EMAs based on what the participant answered in a previous EMA

Experience Sampling

We want to trigger an experience sampling form when specific events happen:

• rule from interaction bubble evaluates to show a new full questionnaire (triggered by event trigger)
• in a specific interval
  • every day at the same time (triggered by periodic trigger)
  • EMA: across the day, with a minimum time between samples (triggered by random_ema trigger)
• once, for example for the takeout questionnaire at the end of a study (triggered by one_time trigger)
• for displaying the questionnaire inside the floating widget (triggered by ema_floating_widget_notification trigger)

A sampling could include the following:

• content separated in steps (title, position)
  • visual/content
    • (rich) text
  • input
    • text
    • radio
    • checkbox
    • Likert scale
    • slider
    • affect grid
    • time/duration
    • circumplex (affect grid)
    • social network
      • entry: possibility to list people in sampling
      • rating: possibility to answer questions about a person
    • button list (only available for floating widget)
  • link to external questionnaire (is embedded in questionnaire to instruct the participant)

---
title: ESM Model
---
erDiagram
    Study
    Questionnaire {
        bool enabled
        string name
        number version
        list rules
    }
    Trigger {
        string eventType
        bool enabled
        object configuration
    }
    Element {
        string type
        number step
        number position
        object configuration
    }
    Questionnaire ||--|{ Trigger : "has"
    Questionnaire ||--o{ Study : "belongs to"
    Element ||--o{ Questionnaire : "belongs to"

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After updating any element of the questionnaire, its version needs to be updated. The app will only update the questionnaire if the version is higher than the one currently cached.

When it samples

• after unlocking: for one minute
• in the background: ever five minutes for one minute

stateDiagram-v2
    state "Sample after Unlock" as Sample_Unlock
    state "Sample Periodically" as Sample_Periodic
    
    [*] --> Idle
    Idle --> Sample_Unlock: After Unlock
    Idle --> Sample_Periodic: After 5 minutes since last periodic
    Sample_Unlock --> Idle: After 1 minute
    Sample_Periodic --> Sample_Unlock: After unlock while sampling
    Sample_Periodic --> Idle: After 1 minute

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Study Configuration

The platform's backend allows multiple studies to be configured and run in parallel, while each participant can only take part in one study at a time. Configuration can be done via the backend's API or directly on the database.

A study's configuration consists of:

• Name
• Enrolment key (which participants need to enter to join the study, unique across all studies)
• Maximum number of participants maxEnrolments, -1 for unlimited participants
• Duration in days durationDays
• Experimental Group allocation strategy allocationStrategy, only sequential is supported for now
• Experimental Groups
  • Name
  • Order
  • Phases
    • Starting day
    • Duration in days
    • Configuration parameters
      • Interaction widget display mode (in time buckets, every time, disabled)

---
title: Study Configuration Model
---
erDiagram
    Study {
        string name
        string enrolmentKey
        int maxEnrolments
        int durationDays
        string allocationStrategy
    }
    Enrolment {
        int id
        int studyId
        string participantId
        int studyExperimentalGroupId
        timestamp enrolledAt
    }
    ExperimentalGroup {
        int id
        int studyId
        string internalName
        int order
    }
    ExperimentalGroupPhase {
        int experimentalGroupId
        int fromDay
        int durationDays
        string interactionWidgetDisplayMode
    }
    Study ||--|{ ExperimentalGroup : "has"
    ExperimentalGroup ||--|{ ExperimentalGroupPhase : "has"
    Study ||--|{ Enrolment : "is enrolled in"
    ExperimentalGroup ||--|{ Enrolment : "belongs to"

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License

All changes starting with commit cf73063b are licensed under the AGPL-3.0 (links gnu.org) license. The original work remains under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for details. Please adhere to the license to ensure transparent and open research.

Acknowledgements & References

Based on the SenseEverything app.

• Weber, D., & Mayer, S. (2014). LogEverything. GitHub Repository. Retrieved from https://github.com/hcilab-org/LogEverything/