Mobile assessment guide for research in schizophrenia and severe mental disorders

Mobile assessment techniques have been used for nearly 3 decades in mental health research, including in investigations of individuals with schizophrenia and other severe disorders. This article reviews the benefits of these data collection strategies relative to traditional self-report or clinician-administered measures administered in hospital or laboratory settings. A detailed discussion of the technical decisions facing researchers in the field is then presented, covering study design issues, questionnaire content development, and choices in hardware and software selection. Following these points, sample recruitment and retention strategies are discussed, as well as the main statistical issues that are necessary to consider in the exploitation of repeated measures data generated by this methodology.