Compare and Contrast Paper

The purpose of this assignment is to get you thinking more critically about how to convert a paper-based measure of a behavior of interest to mobile measurement, in light of the readings so far.

• Pick a health-related behavior that you think is important to measure in the field, either to improve health research or to create more effective health interventions. You can use the same behavior you used in one of the first three assignments if you wish, or a new one. The behavior should be something that it might make sense to measure repeatedly (e.g., through EMA).
• Conduct the same type of search you conducted for assignments 1-3, but in more depth. Be sure to focus both on the past and present (health, psychology, and business literature) and the future (engineering and computer science literature) to find both "traditional" and "emerging" instruments.
  • Make a list of all the research articles you have found and put the articles into the class Mendeley library with appropriate keywords (including one keyword, which is your name). For each article, provide all the reference information for the paper (title, author, journal, pages, etc.) and, if it is available online, a link to the article in the class Dropbox. For articles not available online, provide a hardcopy if possible. In 1-3 paragraphs for each article's entry in Mendeley, explain why you think the article is important for someone trying to understand the behavior you have selected and the history of how that behavior has been measured, or how the behavior may be measured in the future.
  • For this assignment it is critical that you track down the actual questions used in the paper surveys for any survey commonly used. This may require contacting the author, going to the library, using inter-library loan, etc.
  • Determine the historical "genealogy" of the measurement and the likely future directions.
  • Based on your history, identify what you believe are the two most common, present-day methods of gathering data on the behavior. Study the instruments carefully and be sure to find the papers where the instruments have been validated.
  • Also determine what you believe to be the most promising emerging way or ways of measuring the behavior.
• Write an 8-10 page paper (CHI format) (including references) comparing and contrasting the two most common current-day methods of measuring the behavior, and then describe an emerging technology (or technologies) for measurement of the behavior that may change how the behavior is measured in the future. The paper should include references to relevant scientific literature and a description of the pros/cons of the new technology relevant to the older methods, where the paper teaches the reader how the new technology works. Be as detailed as possible in comparing the methods. The paper should discuss how both the old and new methods have (or will or could be) validated by specifically considering the categories discussed in the Sikkes article and in class: content validity, internal consistency, criterion validity, construct validity, reproducibility, responsiveness, floor/ceiling effects, interpretability, usability, feasibility (including technical feasibility), latency, and cost.
• Someone who reads your paper should feel like they fully understand...
  • Why the behavior you chose is important to measure
  • How it has historically been measured
  • How the measurement of that behavior has evolved, and why
  • The two most common or accepted ways to measure the behavior today and what the differences are between the methods, as well as how the methods were validated and how well (relative to the criteria above)
  • The most interesting new development on the horizon for measuring the behavior and why it is exciting, how it would work, and how that has been (or would need to) validated and the pros/cons of the new instrument relative to the instruments used today.

Your paper will be evaluated on how well it demonstrates that you can creatively apply the topics in the course, as well as clarity, grammar, spelling, attention to detail, and overall organization.

Hand in the following:

• A copy of your paper as a Word document and PDF document. I will edit the Word document using track changes.
• A copy of the key surveys that you compare and contrast.
• Update your list of annotated papers on Mendeley.

Send an email with your paper to ...@neu.edu. Name the file in this format: [your last name].compareconstrastpaper.pdf.