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A mobile data collection platform for mental health research

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Abstract

Ubiquitous computing technologies offer exciting new possibilities for monitoring and analyzing user’s experience in real time. In this paper, we describe the design and development of Psychlog, a mobile phone platform designed to collect users’ psychological, physiological, and activity information for mental health research. The tool allows administering self-report questionnaires at specific times or randomly within a day. The system also permits to collect heart rate and activity information from a wireless electrocardiogram equipped with a three-axial accelerometer. By combining self-reports with heart rate and activity data, the application makes it possible to investigate the relationship between psychological, physiological, and behavioral variables, as well as to monitor their fluctuations over time. The software runs on Windows mobile operative system and is available as open source (http://sourceforge.net/projects/psychlog/).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the European funded project “Interstress-Interreality in the management and treatment of stress-related disorders”, FP7-247685.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATN-P Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Gaggioli, Pietro Cipresso & Giuseppe Riva

  2. Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Andrea Gaggioli & Giuseppe Riva

  3. National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute of Clinical Physiology, (IFC), Pisa, Italy

    Giovanni Pioggia, Gennaro Tartarisco, Giovanni Baldus & Daniele Corda

Authors
  1. Andrea Gaggioli
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  2. Giovanni Pioggia
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  3. Gennaro Tartarisco
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  4. Giovanni Baldus
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  5. Daniele Corda
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  6. Pietro Cipresso
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  7. Giuseppe Riva
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Correspondence to Andrea Gaggioli.

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Gaggioli, A., Pioggia, G., Tartarisco, G. et al. A mobile data collection platform for mental health research. Pers Ubiquit Comput 17, 241–251 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0465-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0465-2

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