Memory bias in Ecological Momentary Assessment – a pilot study

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) enables the evaluation of current hearing situations in real time. This can be useful for hearing aid fitting by querying as many everyday situations as possible and fine-tuning the hearing aids based on the individual assessments. However, since not all situations can always be assessed in the moment because safety is not guaranteed or politeness prohibits it, it should also be possible to assess situations retrospectively. This study addresses the question of the extent to which a retrospective assessment of events provides a valid reflection of the situation being assessed. For this purpose, ten participants were fitted with hearing aids and an EMA device for two weeks. The task was to assess various situations in real time and again with a delay of 30 and 60 minutes. In summary, it can be said that situations should be assessed as soon as possible. If this is not possible, the time frame should not exceed 30 minutes, as rare situations particularly benefit from a short delay. When the delay was shortened from 60 to 30 minutes, the deviation in responses was reduced by 8 percentage points. In addition, mood and stress could be more related to the assessment after a delay of 60 minutes. The self-assessment of how well the event could be recalled correlates with the reliability of the responses given.