Real-time Ecological Assessment of the Context of mental and physical Health (REACH): An open-source tool on the Curious platform (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is widely used in mental health research to capture internal states and experiences as they occur in real-world settings. Despite its widespread use, the lack of standardization in EMA content, study design, analytical approaches and data collection platforms has hindered comparability across studies and limited the progress in understanding mental health disorders. This paper describes our development of standardized, open-source tools for collecting EMA with the Real-time Ecological Assessment of the Context of mental and physical Health (REACH) app for the Rhythms and Blues Study protocol at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, a study that characterizes both the lifetime and dynamic profiles of physical and mental health across the lifespan with modules for procedures, sleep, context, media use, affect, negative thoughts, events, physical activity, diet, substance use, pain, headache, physical health and menstrual cycle. The REACH applet has been integrated into Curious, a secure, open- source, configurable, and scalable (formerly Mindlogger) platform through a collaborative effort with the Child Mind Institute in New York. There are four versions of EMA content in REACH: a full and short version for individuals 12 or older, and a full and short version for children ages 6 through 11. Here, we describe the content, materials, and methods of REACH shared under a Creative Commons license to promote access and harmonization of these tools in global settings across the life span particularly in the mental health field.