Participants in experience sampling method (ESM) studies are “beeped” several times per day to report on their momentary experiences—but participants do not always answer the beep. Knowing whether there are systematic predictors of missing a report is critical for understanding the extent to which missing data threatens the validity of inferences from ESM studies. Here, 228 university students completed up to four ESM reports per day while wearing the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)—an unobtrusive audio recording device—for a week. These audio recordings provided an alternative source of information about what participants were doing when they missed or completed reports (3,678 observations). We predicted missing ESM reports from 46 variables coded from the EAR recordings, and found very little evidence that missing an ESM report was correlated with constructs typically of interest to ESM researchers. These findings provide reassuring evidence for the validity of ESM research among relatively healthy university student samples.

体验抽样方法 (ESM) 研究的参与者每天会听到几次“哔哔”声，以报告他们的瞬间体验——但参与者并不总是回答哔哔声。了解是否存在遗漏报告的系统预测因素对于了解遗漏数据在多大程度上威胁 ESM 研究推论的有效性至关重要。在这里，228 名大学生在佩戴电子激活录音机 (EAR)（一种不显眼的录音设备）一周后，每天最多完成四份 ESM 报告。这些录音提供了有关参与者在错过或完成报告时正在做什么的替代信息来源（3,678 次观察）。我们从 EAR 记录编码的 46 个变量中预测了缺失的 ESM 报告，并发现很少有证据表明缺少 ESM 报告与 ESM 研究人员通常感兴趣的结构相关。这些发现为 ESM 研究在相对健康的大学生样本中的有效性提供了令人放心的证据。