ARE YOU RECRUITING?
No, we are not currently recruiting.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE STUDY?
You need to be
- 18 years of age or older
- Able to read, write, and speak English
- Currently enrolled as an undergraduate, graduate, or medical student at UC San Diego
HOW DO I JOIN THE STUDY OF ME RESEARCH STUDY?
Study of Me is currently hosted on a research platform called HealthySMS.
Step 1: Complete the eligibility questionnaire here.
Step 2: Look out for an email from us ([email protected]). We'll let you know if this study is a good fit for you! If it is, we'll give you the next steps for this study.
Study of Me is NOT an app, all communication will happen via SMS and email!
Step 1: Complete the eligibility questionnaire here.
Step 2: Look out for an email from us ([email protected]). We'll let you know if this study is a good fit for you! If it is, we'll give you the next steps for this study.
Study of Me is NOT an app, all communication will happen via SMS and email!
WHY SELF-EXPERIMENT WHEN I KNOW THAT ALL THESE HEALTHY ACTIVITIES ARE GOOD FOR ME?
Have you ever tried some healthy activity (often, multiple times) only to find out that you aren't able to stick to it or that it isn't helping you like you thought it would? Have you ever tried to adopt a healthy habit but don't really know if it's helping you?
If your answer is Yes to any of those questions, worry not, you're not alone! Each individual is different, with their unique life, context, circumstances, experiences, personality, likes and dislikes. This means that a healthy activity that 'works' for Person A may not necessarily work for Person B in the same way.
Most evidence for popular health interventions is from research studies that tell you what happened 'on average' (e.g., "on average, meditation using app X decreased users' stress by Y points over 4 weeks").
Unfortunately, this does not tell you how much that response varied across the different participants in the study.... put differently, how many people the intervention did not work for. See the image below for an example.
If your answer is Yes to any of those questions, worry not, you're not alone! Each individual is different, with their unique life, context, circumstances, experiences, personality, likes and dislikes. This means that a healthy activity that 'works' for Person A may not necessarily work for Person B in the same way.
Most evidence for popular health interventions is from research studies that tell you what happened 'on average' (e.g., "on average, meditation using app X decreased users' stress by Y points over 4 weeks").
Unfortunately, this does not tell you how much that response varied across the different participants in the study.... put differently, how many people the intervention did not work for. See the image below for an example.
Waterfall plot showing change in weight for individual participants in a weight-loss intervention comparing low-carb and low-fat diets (from Gardner et al. 2018).
Self-experimentation is a systematic way in which you can find out whether a given healthy activity actually improves your own mental health and well-being. These insights can help you make decisions about which activities to adopt in your life.
HOW DOES STUDY OF ME WORK?
Study of Me is a tool designed to help you run short self-experiments to explore if small changes in your life, such as a few minutes of exercise or deep breathing, improve some aspects of your mental health and well-being, specifically your happiness, stress and focus.
1. Once you complete a survey, interview, and choose the activity that you'd like to try, you will begin your 30-day experiment.
We'll give you basic instructions on how to perform the activity, but you can further improvise it in a way that you like.
2. Once the experiment begins, each day you'll be randomly assigned to either stick to your usual routine, OR do the activity.
3. You'll also be tracking your stress, focus, and happiness on all 30 days.
This way, we will be able to compare days that you do the activity vs. don't, and figure out whether ADDING that activity seemed to improve your mental health and well-being!
4. Once your experiment ends, you will complete another survey and interview. We will also analyze your data and share the insights with you (send you a pdf with graphs and results explained in simple language).
1. Once you complete a survey, interview, and choose the activity that you'd like to try, you will begin your 30-day experiment.
We'll give you basic instructions on how to perform the activity, but you can further improvise it in a way that you like.
2. Once the experiment begins, each day you'll be randomly assigned to either stick to your usual routine, OR do the activity.
3. You'll also be tracking your stress, focus, and happiness on all 30 days.
This way, we will be able to compare days that you do the activity vs. don't, and figure out whether ADDING that activity seemed to improve your mental health and well-being!
4. Once your experiment ends, you will complete another survey and interview. We will also analyze your data and share the insights with you (send you a pdf with graphs and results explained in simple language).
CAN I LEAVE MY SELF-EXPERIMENT ONCE IT BEGINS?
You are free to discontinue the experiment whenever you want. However, since the purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of Study of Me for users such as yourself, we would appreciate it if you gave us feedback about why you decided to discontinue!
IS THIS STUDY IRB APPROVED?
Yes! This study has been approved by UC San Diego's IRB board and is registered as Project #201026.
