“Use of Ecological Proximal Assessment to Study Trauma Survivors”

The Dissection of Innovative Methods session will be led by Eve Carlson, PhD, with the National Center for PTSD and VA Palo Alto Health Care System. This special session, intended to introduce a novel or creative approach to trauma research, will focus on the use of an ecological proximal assessment (EPA) approach. EPA involves collecting frequent self-reports that are proximal in time to the phenomena of interest by having participants make their reports on hand-held computers (PDAs) in their natural environments. Because EPA allows use of multilevel data analysis methods to study directionality of relationships among variables and within-person variable relationships, it can be used to investigate hypotheses about the development of posttraumatic psychological disorders. At CITRM, Carlson will speak on the broad utility of EPA methods and on many of the practical problems involved in implementing PDA-based design.