Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)

 

 

Assessment Instrument:  Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)

The EAR is a scientific instrument for recording short snippets of ambient sounds (e.g., 30 sec every 12.5 min). Participants activate an app or wear a device while the recorder creates audio files.

Inventor: The EAR was developed by psychological scientist Matthais Mehl.

DATA: The raw data are acoustic files.

Data Analyses:

Researchers can listen to the data or read a transcript to search for targeted data. For example, a researcher could search for evidence of humility or anger.

Researchers could use a coding strategy to identify multiple target sounds, words, or phrases.

The data could be analyzed for social environmental data using the Social Environment Coding of Sound Inventory (SECSI; Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003).

Researchers can submit the data for qualitative or quantitative text analysis.

Examples of participant EAR data (See Tackman & Mehl, 2003.)

1. Location of the person (e.g., home, vehicle)

2. Behavior (e.g., watching a movie, working)

3. Verbal behavior (e.g., talking with others by phone, in person, expressing thoughts)

4. Indications of emotion (e.g., laughing, arguing)

 

References

Mehl, M. R. (2017). The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A Method for the Naturalistic Observation of Daily Social Behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(2), 184-190. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416680611

Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2003). The sounds of social life: A psychometric analysis of students’ daily social environments and natural conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 857–870

Tackman, A.M., Mehl, M.R. (2017). Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_657-1

 

 

Resource Link:  A – Z Test Index

 

 

 

NOTICE:

The information about scales and measures is provided for clinicians and researchers based on professional publications. The links to authors, materials, and references can change. You may be able to locate details by contacting the main author of the original article or another author on the article list.

 

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