Researching Cancer Risk Behaviors Among Bilingual Latinos Using Technology and an Intensive Longitudinal Design

Abstract

Health psychology researchers study patterns of human behavior. As such, they strive to examine health behaviors in a way that captures the complexity and uniqueness of individuals, including factors such as attitudes, beliefs, and personality traits. This case study includes a discussion of how the research team for Project Research on Environments And Lifestyles, a study of cancer risk behaviors among Latinos, used traditional in-person surveys as well as technologically advanced ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and accelerometers to improve the accuracy of their data. It also explains how the team recruited Latino participants, which is an understudied population in health psychology research. Details about the challenges, benefits, and solutions that the research team navigated during study implementation are discussed. The goal of this case study is to describe the researchers’ experiences and lessons learned from recruiting bilingual Latinos into health psychology research and using EMA technology with this population so that undergraduate and graduate students may gain a basic understanding of the topics and be well-informed as they pursue their own research.

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