An Evaluation of Students’ Interest in and Compliance With Self-Tracking Methods: Recommendations for Incentives Based on Three Smartphone Sensing Studies

Abstract

Self-tracking consists of recording the behaviors that occur in one’s daily life. Self-tracking studies can provide researchers with passively sensed information about individual’s daily behaviors and environments and actively logged information (e.g., self-reports). This method has great promise for obtaining detailed records of behavior in naturalistic contexts, but it is not known what factors would motivate individuals to participate in self-tracking studies. Here, we analyze students’ interest in self-tracking and their compliance with self-tracking using smartphones. Three dimensions of self-tracking motivations were identified: productivity and health behaviors, well-being and daily a..