Newsletter
The SAA Newsletter is a quarterly publication that is available to all SAA Members. If you have information or suggestions for the newsletter, please send an email to SAA Communications Committee Chair – R. Ross MacLean at ross[dot]maclean[at]yale[dot]edu.
Follow us on BlueSky 
@ambulatory-assessment.org
The Communications Committee would like help naming our newsletter. Please vote using the options below! We will announce the winning name in the June 2025 edition.
Conference Information
The 2025 Society for Ambulatory Assessment Conference is only a few months away! This year’s conference will be held in Leuven, Belgium and will be hosted by KU Leuven on May 26 through 28. The conference offers a diverse array of workshops, social/networking activities, and an exciting range of keynote talks, symposia, oral presentations, and poster sessions over a four day period. These elements of the conference are organized by four research groups at KU: The Center for Contextual Psychiatry, Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences, Research on Experience sampling and Ambulatory methods Leuven (REAL), and the Methodology of Educational Sciences Research Group (CMPO – Centrum voor Methodologie van het Pedagogisch Onderzoek). Led by conference coordinators are Prof. Peter Kuppens, Prof. Inez Myin-Germeys, Prof. Olivia Kirtley, and Prof. Ginette Lafit and their hard-working team (see the Spotlight below), the conference promises to bring researchers from around the world to share and collaborate on ambulatory science.
Who typically attends SAA conferences?
The 2025 SAA conference brings together researchers, specialists, and innovators in the field of ambulatory assessment. The term ambulatory assessment is often defined by the use of field methods to assess ongoing behavior, physiology, experience and environmental aspects of people in naturalistic or unconstrained settings. Importantly, ambulatory assessment uses ecologically-valid tools to understand biopsychosocial processes as they unfold naturally in time and in context.
Ambulatory assessment covers a range of real-time data capture methodologies that originate from different scientific disciplines (psychology, medicine, computer science, etc.). These methodologies include but are not limited to:
- Experience sampling and ecological momentary assessment
- Intensive longitudinal designs
- Repeated-entry diary techniques
- Monitoring of physiological function, in combination with or without physical behaviour
- Acquisition of ambient environmental parameters
What can I do while I am in Leuven?
The host city, Leuven, lies in the heart of Belgium and is known for its university and architecture. KU Leuven is one of Europe’s oldest and most esteemed universities and contributes to Leuven’s youthful and dynamic energy. Among the top attractions in Leuven is the Town Hall with a stunning Gothic sculptural facade, St. Peter’s Church that offers a unique collection of art and history, the oldest Botanical Garden in Belgium, and the Stella Artois brewery. Getting around Leuven is a walkable city with efficient public transportation and bikes available to rent. To plan your visit and learn more about Leuven, check out VisitLeuven and the conference website.
Keep in mind the following dates:
- March 3: Abstract acceptance
- March 7: Deadline SAA Early Career Award (see Notifications and Recognition below)
- March 19: Deadline for Travel Award (see Notifications and Recognition below)
- April 4: Deadline for early bird registration
- April 4: Last day to register for mentor lunch
- May 26: Conference starts
Conference Social Activities and Events
| Activity | Fee | Date | Sponsor |
| Stella brewery visit for early career researchers | Free of charge! | Sunday 25 May | SAA |
| Welcome reception | Free of charge! | Monday 26 May | SAA/Leuven |
| Conference dinner + m-Party | 65 EUR | Tuesday 27 May | m-Path |
| Mentor lunch | Free of charge! | Wednesday 28 May |
The 2025 SAA conference will provide an opportunity for our ambulatory assessment community to collaborate and connect. Click here to register for the conference. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to the conference organizers via email at [email protected].
SAA Spotlight
BEHIND THE SCENES OF SAA 2025
Hi everyone! My name is Eveline, and I am the coordinator of the Social Team for the 2025 SAA Conference. Our team of five is responsible for organizing several key social events, including the Young Researchers’ Activity, the Welcome Reception, the Conference Dinner, and the Mentor Lunch. As the coordinator, I attend senior meetings to bring forward any questions from my team and to stay informed about the overall conference organization.
One of the biggest challenges we face is ensuring clear communication between all partners involved. With so many moving parts, it’s crucial that everyone stays updated on the plans. To streamline this communication, we have to schedule multiple meetings and send out many emails to keep everything on track.
Personally, I am most excited about the Conference Dinner. It’s going to be a fantastic evening, and the best part? There will be a great party afterward where everyone can hit the dance floor!
We can’t wait to welcome you all and create an unforgettable experience together!
Hi everyone! I am Lisa Peeters, a PhD student here at KU Leuven, and I represent the Logistics Team for the 2025 SAA Conference. Together with the other representatives, I attend senior meetings to stay updated on the decisions made by other teams, and to update everyone on the work of the Logistics Team. This work includes a lot of the practical organization of a conference, such as the layout of the conference building, arrangements for the coffee breaks and lunches, the conference schedule, and much more.
One of the biggest challenges – for the Logistics Team, but perhaps for the organization of any conference or event in general, as well – is dealing with uncertainty. How many attendees will we welcome at the conference? Will the unpredictable Belgian weather be pleasant at the end of May? Will there be construction work nearby that could be disruptive? There are many of these small and large pieces of information that we would like to be sure of before any important decisions are made, but this is nearly impossible. Luckily, we can count on the help of experienced conference organizers to navigate these challenges!
Personally, I love the social aspect of attending a conference, both in an academic setting (e.g., an interesting discussion at a poster session) and in more casual settings. So, I am definitely looking forward to the Social Team’s efforts in the organization of the Conference Dinner and M-Party!
Greetings from the communications committee!
My name is Sigert Ariens, and I have had the pleasure of coordinating the communications of SAA 2025. Together with a team of motivated Ph.D students and postdocs, we put together a website, (with many thanks to Jordan Revol), managed the social media (with many thanks to Rana Kalkan), and made plans on when to send out which emails.
One of the biggest challenges we faced was to make sure we were always up to date with what the other organizing teams had in mind for the coming weeks. This allowed us to plan our communication activities in advance, but we also often needed to implement things on short notice.
I am looking forward to seeing how the efforts of everyone involved in the planning of the conference come together, and to hearing about the latest developments in ambulatory assessment.
Research Brief
Several SAA members contributed to a 2024 paper published in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science titled “So you want to do ESM? 10 essential topics for implementing the experience-sampling method.” Led by co-first authors Jessica Fritz, PhD, and Marilyn Piccirillo, PhD, this initiative served as a primer on 10 key considerations for ESM studies. Topics included item content and phrasing, power and effect sizes, missingness and compliance, reliability, and several more that we know will be of interest to the SAA community. For each topic, the authors provide a review of challenges, and if available, potential solutions, including references for in-depth readings. The full paper is available open-access here. Drs. Fritz and Piccirillo also graciously shared their thoughts on the process of working on this important project (see below).
Dr. Jessica Fritz (left) and Dr. Marilyn Piccirillo (right)
Q: What was the inspiration behind the paper?
A: The inspiration behind the paper really originated from a series of ongoing conversations over the past few years around how to use experience sampling to personalize assessments for individuals (e.g., in a clinical care setting). Across these discussions, it became increasingly clear that many of the methods- or protocol-related decisions necessary for personalizing assessments were often not reported in ESM papers (e.g., due to word count limitations) and so the co-authorship team held two virtual panel discussions in November 2021 and January 2022 to discuss these issues further. The panel discussions were immensely helpful in elucidating the common topics that come up in designing an ESM protocol and so we decided to write up the collective insights from these discussions to share them more broadly with the research community.
Q: What was the process like narrowing down to these 10 topics?
A: We tried to align the 10 topics very closely with the topics we set out for the panel discussion, which we collectively had deemed important from our previous conversations. As we began writing the paper, we added in subtopics. For example, we added “compliance” to the “missingness” topic and we split the “time scale” topic into “sampling scheme”, “sampling frequency”, “survey length” and “study duration” to better illustrate the nuances within these topics. We also tried to closely focus on topics related to design and implementation, rather than statistical topics (e.g., how to accommodate distribution or response biases, such as zero-inflation or initial elevations).
Q: How did writing the paper shape your thinking on this topic?
A: The writing of the paper certainly shed light on all the seemingly minor design decisions that in practice, can have major impacts on your data, results, and interpretations. In equal measure it created an awareness for the knowledge around design-related topics that we have and the knowledge that we lack, resulting in our protocol-related decisions sometimes being arbitrary an unwillingly uninformed. To conserve these additional thoughts, we’re working on a second paper that focuses on all the things we would love know, but currently lack insight on.
If you are an SAA member and have a recently published paper you would like us yo highlight in the next newsletter, please let us know! We are excited to highlight the fantastic research of SAA members.
Education Opportunities
Please send free workshops and training opportunities that will occur in the next 3 to 6 months and we will include it here! If you are an SAA member and you are leading a workshop or training opportunity that incurs a cost, please forward relevant information and we will also include it here. Programs that have a fee or tuition are denoted with ($).
Upcoming workshops from ECNP
GetDigital webinar series: digital health for ADHD: 11 March 2025
https://knowledge-hub.ecnp.eu/webinar/getdigital-webinar-series-digital-health-adhd-0
GetDigital webinar series: scalability of digital tech: 8 April 2025
https://knowledge-hub.ecnp.eu/webinar/getdigital-webinar-series-scalability-digital-tech
Hybrid Summer School on Intensive Longitudinal Methods, Dyadic Data Analysis and Machine Learning
Organized by the Institute for Gender in Medicine at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the event will take place from August 11th – 21st, 2025, both in Berlin and online.
The summer school is designed for graduate students, postdocs and researchers who are conducting or planning intensive longitudinal studies and wish to deepen their knowledge of advanced study designs and data analysis techniques.
PROGRAM MODULES
As in previous years, the Hybrid Summer School 2025 program will include three modules. Participants can register for individual sessions or the full program.
For more information on course content, schedule, fees, and registration, please visit Summer School 2025). If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to at [email protected].
- 3-Day Summer School: Introduction to Intensive Longitudinal Methods (August 11th – 13th)
- 5-Day Summer School: Dyadic Data Analysis (August 14th – 20th)
- 1-Day Workshop: Machine Learning Day (August 21st)
Upcoming SMART Workshops ($)
Below are upcoming synchronous workshops that will be led by Dr. Aidan Wright (SAA member). The links below are for asynchronous options and provide a description of the content for each of educational workshops this summer.
Designing Ambulatory Assessment Studies – https://smart-workshops.com/ambulatory-info – June 5th-6th
Multilevel Modeling for Longitudinal Data Analysis – https://smart-workshops.com/long-mlm-info – June 18th-20th
Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling – https://smart-workshops.com/msem-info – July 23rd-25th
Notifications and Recognition
TRAVEL Scholarships for SAA 2025
SAA is offering a total of ten travel scholarships for Early Career Members this year, including 5 “within continent travel scholarships” (750 EURO) and 5 “cross continental travel scholarships” (1500 EURO) for the active participation in the SAA Conference 2025.
Individuals must meet the following criteria:
1. Are SAA Early Career Members and have paid dues for 2025.
2. Are currently in undergraduate, graduate, or pre-doctoral training programs OR within three years after attaining their doctoral degree (the three-year post-degree eligibility period is extended by one additional year for each child born or adopted in this period, and / or care work).
3. Are presenting a symposium, talk, or poster at the SAA 2025 conference.
To apply, please submit your application by March 19, 2025 (23:59 CET) at the following link:
https://odu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2irulkyYU2mFud0
SAA EARLY CAREER Award
The Society for Ambulatory Assessment will award the SAA Early Career Award at this year’s conference in Leuven, Belgium. All current paying SAA members who obtained their doctorate degree within the last three years (i.e., in the calendar year 2022 or later) are eligible to apply. The three-year post-degree eligibility period is extended by one additional year for each child born or adopted in this period, and / or care work.
To apply, members submit their best peer-reviewed ambulatory assessment paper published in 2023 or later; “online first” and final print versions are acceptable. Please send the article in pdf in an informal email to [email protected], with a subject “SAA Early Career Award”, including information about the year you obtained the doctorate degree.
The application deadline is March 7, 2025 (23:59 CET).
All applications will be reviewed by the SAA Awards Committee and applicants will be informed of the final decision via email by the end of April 2025. To be considered for the award, applicants need to be SAA members for the calendar year 2025 by the application deadline.
The award recipient will receive a 500 EURO endowment and an invitation to present their awarded work in a keynote at this year’s conference. Please only consider applying if you plan to attend the conference in person.
Community Information
To promote your research on social media, follow us on BlueSky @ambulatory-assessment.org. When you write a BlueSky post, tag the SAA account and we will repost to our BlueSky feed and share your hard work with other SAA members.
If you have job postings or faculty searches, please send them to SAA ([email protected]) and we can send them out to SAA members. We will also post them here in each newsletter!
COMMUNITY SURVEY
It is common in ESM research to ask open-ended items, such as “what was the most negative experience you had today?”. However, these answers are rarely analyzed. Therefore, inspired by www.mitnb.org, we (Laura Bringmann and Marie Stadel) want to map out to what extent people use open-ended items/text boxes and why. Please fill out this very short survey if you do ESM/AA/EMA/daily diary research. You can fill it out even if you do not use open-ended items in your own ESM research: https://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aaEL8U4UBXkTcbQ
SAA Communication Committee Members
- R. Ross MacLean, Ph.D. (Committee Chair), Yale School of Medicine and VA Connecticut Healthcare System
- Lauren DiPaolo, Ph.D., Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center
- Haijing Hallenbeck, Ph.D., VA National Center for PTSD and Stanford University Medical Center
- Laura König, Ph.D., University of Vienna
- Femke Lamers, Ph.D., Amsterdam University Medical Center
- Anne Sosin, M.Sc., RWTH Aachen University