The ILHBN: challenges, opportunities, and solutions from harmonizing data under heterogeneous study designs, target populations, and measurement protocols

Sy-Miin Chow; Inbal Nahum-Shani; Justin T Baker; Donna Spruijt-Metz; Nicholas B Allen; Randy P Auerbach; Genevieve F Dunton; Naomi P Friedman; Stephen S Intille; Predrag Klasnja; Benjamin Marlin; Matthew K Nock; Scott L Rauch; Misha Pavel; Scott Vrieze; David W Wetter; Evan M Kleiman; Timothy R Brick; Heather Perry; Dana L Wolff-Hughes; Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network (ILHBN)

doi:10.1093/tbm/ibac069

The ILHBN: challenges, opportunities, and solutions from harmonizing data under heterogeneous study designs, target populations, and measurement protocols

Transl Behav Med. 2023 Jan 20;13(1):7-16. doi: 10.1093/tbm/ibac069.

Authors

Sy-Miin Chow¹, Inbal Nahum-Shani², Justin T Baker^{3

4}, Donna Spruijt-Metz^{5

6}, Nicholas B Allen⁷, Randy P Auerbach⁸, Genevieve F Dunton^{5

9}, Naomi P Friedman^{10

11}, Stephen S Intille^{12

13}, Predrag Klasnja¹⁴, Benjamin Marlin¹⁵, Matthew K Nock^{16

17

18

19}, Scott L Rauch^{3

4}, Misha Pavel^{12

13}, Scott Vrieze²⁰, David W Wetter^{21

22}, Evan M Kleiman²³, Timothy R Brick^{1

24}, Heather Perry¹, Dana L Wolff-Hughes²⁵; Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network (ILHBN)

Collaborators

Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network (ILHBN):
Yosef Bodovski, Shirlene Wang, Jonathan Kaslander, Daniel Chu, Aditya Ponnada, Rebecca Braga De Braganca, Dana Schloesser, Guanqing Chi, Daniel Rivera, Einat Liebenthal

Affiliations

¹ Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
² Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
³ Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, Boson, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boson, MA, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶ Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
⁸ Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
⁹ Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
¹¹ Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
¹² Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
¹³ Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
¹⁴ School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
¹⁵ College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
¹⁸ Franciscan Children's, Boston, MA, USA.
¹⁹ Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
²⁰ Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
²¹ Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
²² Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
²³ Department of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
²⁴ Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
²⁵ National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Abstract

The ILHBN is funded by the National Institutes of Health to collaboratively study the interactive dynamics of behavior, health, and the environment using Intensive Longitudinal Data (ILD) to (a) understand and intervene on behavior and health and (b) develop new analytic methods to innovate behavioral theories and interventions. The heterogenous study designs, populations, and measurement protocols adopted by the seven studies within the ILHBN created practical challenges, but also unprecedented opportunities to capitalize on data harmonization to provide comparable views of data from different studies, enhance the quality and utility of expensive and hard-won ILD, and amplify scientific yield. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief report of the challenges, opportunities, and solutions from some of the ILHBN's cross-study data harmonization efforts. We review the process through which harmonization challenges and opportunities motivated the development of tools and collection of metadata within the ILHBN. A variety of strategies have been adopted within the ILHBN to facilitate harmonization of ecological momentary assessment, location, accelerometer, and participant engagement data while preserving theory-driven heterogeneity and data privacy considerations. Several tools have been developed by the ILHBN to resolve challenges in integrating ILD across multiple data streams and time scales both within and across studies. Harmonization of distinct longitudinal measures, measurement tools, and sampling rates across studies is challenging, but also opens up new opportunities to address cross-cutting scientific themes of interest.

Keywords: EMA; Health behavior changes; ILHBN; Location; Sensor.

Plain language summary

Health behavior changes, such as prevention of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, smoking, drug use, and alcohol use; and the promotion of mental health, sleep, and physical activities, and decreases in sedentary behavior, are difficult to sustain. The ILHBN is a cooperative agreement network funded jointly by seven participating units within the National Institutes of Health to collaboratively study how factors that occur in individuals’ everyday life and in their natural environment influence the success of positive health behavior changes. This article discusses how information collected using smartphones, wearables, and other devices can provide helpful active and passive reflections of the participants’ extent of risk and resources at the moment for an extended period of time. However, successful engagement and retention of participants also require tailored adaptations of study designs, measurement tools, measurement intervals, study span, and device choices that create hurdles in integrating (harmonizing) data from multiple studies. We describe some of the challenges, opportunities, and solutions that emerged from harmonizing intensive longitudinal data under heterogeneous study and participant characteristics within the ILHBN, and share some tools and recommendations to facilitate future data harmonization efforts.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Ecological Momentary Assessment*
Health Services Needs and Demand
Humans
Research Design*
Review Literature as Topic

Abstract

Plain language summary

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding