The Department of Human Development and Family Studies presents Joshua Smyth, Distinguished Professor of Biobehavioral Health and Medicine, and head of the Dynamic Real-Time Ecological Ambulatory Methodologies (DREAM) program at The Pennsylvania State University, who will be visiting CSU and giving a talk entitled “Ambulatory Assessment and Intervention in Daily Life.”  Smyth’s talk will be on Monday, Nov. 27, from 3-4 p.m., in the Behavioral Sciences Building room 457.

Smyth’s presentation will broadly attempt to describe the rationale, implementation, and contributions of real-time, ambulatory assessment and intervention; that is, why and how to study ‘free-range’ humans. In particular, he will describe the importance of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and the real time monitoring of person-centered variables, with a particular eye to ecological validity and time-varying within-person processes. Next he will briefly outline some approaches and emerging technologies for ambulatory assessment in real world settings, followed by some discussion of the potential to merge EMA/ambulatory assessments with other methodological and intervention approaches (including information at other time scales). Finally, he will provide examples of key time-varying patient variables (e.g., affect, behaviors, physiology) that can be measured and used to inform intervention approaches, including more traditional tailoring methods (at the between-person level) as well as innovative time-varying treatment options (e.g., just-in-time [JIT] and adaptive treatments, microrandomization).

The Department of Human Development and Family Studies is part of the College of Health and Human Sciences.