xSample

What is xSample?

xSample app for administering experience sampling methodology is a free, open-source application for running questionnaires, surveys, etc.

Experience sampling or experience sampling method (ESM) refers to set of techniques to capture people's behaviors, thoughts, or feelings as they occur in real-time.

xSample runs on the Android mobile phones and allows tracking emotions and actions of participants. xSample asks questions to participants and records their answers and their response times. The data are later uploaded to a computer for analysis.

xSample is quite configurable - the experimenter determines the questions, their order, how often to run trials, whether trials occur at predetermined or random times, etc. It also allows tracking the number of incoming and outgoing calls, the number of text messages exchanged

xSample is very user friendly, and it does not require programing knowledge.

How secure and private is this?

The data about the calls and messaging are restricted only to the amount of the mobile traffic, and not to the content of it. The data are stored to the central server where it is completely secure. The data will be used exclusively to researchers conducting study as part of the project of the Institute of psychology and Department of psychology, University of Belgrade. Our goal is to have more comprehensible view on humans’ everyday feeling, thoughts and behavior, and their relations to some of the most important psychological characteristics.

xSample app

Once you install the app, start it. You have to agree with the terms of usage, and you need to register with your name, email and a password.

After the application is successfully launched, the welcome screen will be displayed to you. You can safely resume using your phone as you did before the application was installed. The application will run quietly in the background, except for those few moments when it prompts you to fill out a questionnaire. Notifications will be delivered using your standard notification sound/vibration settings. In case you miss a notification, or quit a survey before filling out all the questions, you can restart the application by using its icon or shortcut on your phone.

Can I withdraw from using xSample app?

If for any reason you want to withdraw from the experiment you can easily do so by uninstalling the application. After the app has been uninstalled, no further questionnaires nor sensor data will be collected.