Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) involves collecting self-reports on internal states (e.g., moods) and behaviors (e.g., drinking) multiple times per day in individuals’ everyday lives and environments.

Drs. R. Lorraine Collins of RIA and Mark Muraven of the University of Albany describe three studies in which they used EMA to examine the Limit Violation Effect (LVE).
 
LVE involves a cycle of setting limits on drinking, violating those limits, experiencing negative reactions related to blaming one’s self for the violation, and drinking excessively as a way of handling the negative reactions.

LVE is experienced by restrained drinkers -- persons who experience a conflict between being attracted to alcohol and wanting to regulate their alcohol intake.

Restrained drinkers who fail to regulate their drinking and experience negative reactions to their failure tend to drink excessively, thereby increasing their risk for alcohol problems.

During periods ranging from two to eight weeks, EMA was used to examine alcohol consumption by social drinkers.

This involved providing research participants with electronic diaries (ED) which consisted of personal digital assistants, (i.e., Psion Business Organizer or a Palm Pilot Professional) loaded with special self-monitoring software.

Social drinkers monitored their moods, drinking behavior, activities, locations and social contexts. They were trained to use the ED during all waking hours and as an alarm clock each morning.

ED interviews consisted of a participant-initiated morning interview, response to an audible random prompt four or five times each day, a participant-initiated “begin drinking” interview before drinking and an “end drinking” interview at the end of the drinking episode.
Participants used their EDs to provide a steady flow of complex data. Across different samples and several analyses, EMA data provided support for the LVE.

Results showed that individuals who drank more than they wanted and blamed themselves for that excessive drinking, experienced more negative emotion immediately after drinking and the morning after drinking.

Negative emotional states after drinking was related to greater subsequent alcohol intake, especially among heavier drinkers.

The EMA allowed researchers to examine the self-regulation of alcohol intake in a prospective and meaningful way. They could analyze the EMA data using a within-subject approach to examine the antecedents and consequences of alcohol consumption within one individual over multiple episodes of drinking.

At the same time, the between-subjects analyses provided insight into how these processes differed between people. EMA data collection also minimized biases, such as memory distortions or concerns about self-presentation, while permitting tight control over data collection.

EMA methodology represents an important advance for testing and building a model of alcohol use and abuse. The ability to assess internal and external phenomena as they occur over time, in an ecologically valid manner, presents researchers with the opportunity to study alcohol-related phenomena in greater detail.

They also can examine hypotheses that heretofore have been difficult or nearly impossible to investigate using cross-sectional surveys, experiments, or laboratory methods.

For more on this, see: Collins, R. L., & Muraven, M. (2007). Ecological momentary assessment of alcohol consumption. In A. A. Stone, S. Shiffman, A. A. Atienza, & L. Nebling (Eds.) The science of real-time data capture: Self reports in health research (pp. 189-203). New York: Oxford University Press.

The Research Institute on Addictions / RIA Report
http://www.ria.buffalo.edu/pdf/RIAReport202.pdf