Descriptive Experience Sampling
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Descriptive Experience Sampling or DES is a method that aims to uncover the contents of a person's consciousness over the course of short intervals. To do this, practitioners use devices that deliver random beeps. Participants hear these beeps as they go about their daily life. After each beep, they jot down what was in their inner experience in the short moment directly before the beep. This could be a thought, feeling, ‘voice in their head’, or whatever else is present. After a certain number of beeps are collected, participants are given an interview following strict guidelines. DES holds that participants must be trained over the course of multiple days in order to faithfully observe what's in their experience. Findings often differ greatly from participant expectations and sometimes even from scientific consensus.[1]
Russell Hurlburt developed the method in the early 1970s.[2] It was refined over the course of the next decades, with the help of frequent collaborators such as Christopher Heavey, Sarah Akther, and Alek Krumm. Hurlburt and collaborators wanted a method to examine inner experience without the memory errors, biases, heuristics, and self-schema based preconceptions that can distort first-person reporting.
First-person methods have had a difficult history. A disagreement between two camps of introspectionists at the beginning of the 20th century led to the field's abandonment by mainstream psychology.[3][4] An influential 1977 study by Nisbett and Wilson further cemented the notion that first-person reporting is flawed and distorted by memory issues and biases.
Hurlburt and colleagues sought a method that would overcome these limitations. DES complies with Nisbett and Wilson's oft-overlooked recommendations for how first-person reports could be more accurately obtained.[5] These include 1) interrupting a process at the moment it is occurring, 2) alerting subjects to pay careful attention to their cognitive process, and 3) coaching them in introspective procedures.
Hurlburt's research started with the use of the beeper device in naturalistic settings. Originally he gave participants a questionnaire with a limited range of options. This facilitated quantitative comparison.[6] But reportedly, Hurlburt grew frustrated at the limitations this placed on unveiling experience. He moved towards more in-depth qualitative interviewing.[7] He studied the work of Husserl and Heidegger and drew inspiration from phenomenology.
When first refining the method, Hurlburt at first sampled himself. He then concluded that it would be better not to use himself as a subject. Phenomena that he observed in himself he might more easily attribute to others. For the next 25 years or so he refused to participate in DES as a subject until the urgings of his students convinced him to try.[8]
Method
Procedure
DES uses a device that delivers random beeps to participants throughout the day. It can be a specialized device or a programmed smartphone. The beeps are delivered through an earpiece—to increase the immediacy with which participants can observe their experience. In a typical procedure, participants receive six beeps a day. Sampling occurs in the participant's everyday environment to increase ecological validity. They could be doing laundry, having lunch with friends, driving to work, or whatever else they would typically do.

After each beep, participants jot down what was in their inner experience directly before the beep. Not after or during, but directly before. This is sometimes referred to as the “millisecond” before the beep, or the “last undisturbed moment”.[9] These phrasings are both somewhat inaccurate, but the goal is to convey to the subject that they should be as precise as possible in their descriptions.
After six beeps are collected, participants are given a one-hour interview. This interview is delivered within 24 hours of beep collection, to reduce errors of memory recall. The premise of one-hour interviews is to not exhaust the patient. Any beeps not discussed within the hour are discarded. Participants are told that they can choose not to report any beep that is too private.
The entire process of beep collection and interviewing is repeated, usually for around six days but often longer.[10] The first day of sampling and interviewing is always considered training and discarded from further data analysis. Other days may be discarded as well if interviewers judge that the participant is not yet adequately trained. DES holds that observing experience is difficult and the sustained efforts of both the participant and interviewer, as “co-investigators,” are required. What follows is an example of an admissible DES sample, which researchers compile based on the participant's interview responses.[11]
Steven was pacing around his condo engaged in a mental argument. At the beep he was innerly saying the word “whatever” to himself in his own voice, as if directed at the person he was mentally arguing with. He was also aware of a sense of frustration and an accompanying sensation of heat and outward-radiating pressure behind his ears and eyes. Simultaneously, he was also aware of a “frenetic” restless energy in his arms and legs that made him feel like he had to be moving.
After samples are collected, they can be coded. This sample, for example, could be coded as containing inner speaking (the “whatever” element), feeling (the sense of frustration), and sensory awareness (the restless energy). After coding, intrasubject, intersubject and intergroup analysis can also be performed.
Interview guidelines
The interview procedure is detailed in books like Exploring Inner Experience: The Descriptive Experience Sampling method.[12] It is also available in an interactive website[13] and a video series.[14]
DES interviews follow rigorous guidelines. A core component is “bracketing presuppositions”.[15][16] Interviewers must leave behind their notions of what they think experience is like. A participant's experience may be very different from their own. Participants are also trained to bracket their own presuppositions. They might at first have preconceived notions of their experience that prevent careful observation.
DES literature contains examples of participants originally mistaken about their experience. For example, one participant, Donald, prior to DES, described his experience as mostly consisting of anxiety. But DES Sampling revealed that in a good deal of his samples he was angry, specifically at his children.[17] Donald denied this theme until shown his samples. Hurlburt interprets that retrospective self-accounts are often incorrect. Presuppositions can be difficult to overcome.
In order to reach accurate descriptions without biasing participants, DES uses what Hurlburt calls “open-beginninged probes.”[18] One such question could be: ‘What, if anything, was in your experience at the moment of the beep?’ Other phrasings like "what were you thinking about at the moment of the beep" could bias participants—for example suggesting that they need to report something that qualifies as “thinking.”
Interviews should avoid generalizations and guide participants toward the concrete. For example, a participant might answer, “I always am talking to myself.” This is not admissible for DES. The goal is to find what was in experience specifically at the instance before the beep.
If questions aren't content-neutral, interviewers should give multiple options. For example, if a participant describes a mental image, the next step could be eliciting greater precision. Questioning could proceed: ‘Were there borders around the image? Or no borders? Or you’re not sure?’ Opportunities should be given for participants to revise their story or change it completely.
Interviewers pay attention to “subjunctification.” This includes hesitation, words like ‘umm,’ ‘like,’ ‘I guess,’ and ‘I suppose’. These can indicate the participant's doubt and their removal from direct experience.
The goal of DES is not to force an accurate description for every sample. Often, samples are inconclusive. The goal is to train participants so they can be more sensitive to their experience on subsequent days. Each day of interviewing can be considered training for the next.
Validity
Claims to validity
Hurlburt and Heavey write that DES follows ‘idiographic validity’.[19] By this, they mean that we can only judge the validity of DES for one participant at a time. Researchers approaching the method should ask if they are convinced by the argumentation behind the method's guidelines. They should then ask if the researcher and participant in question complied with these guidelines.
Validity studies can also be performed. One study looked at the interobserver reliability of interviewing and coding. Two researchers independently interviewed DES participants and coded their experiences. They compared these codes to see if they matched and found high reliability.[20]
DES samples can also be checked with other observables. Hurlburt and Heavey refer to this as situating DES in a “nomological network.”[21] This means an interlocking system of observables that can help build up validity. These could be first-person or third-person observables.
For example, one DES participant, Fran, did not have any figure / ground distinction in her mental imagery.[22] No part of her mental images appeared closer or better in focus. Hurlburt was surprised by this and sought another way of testing. He showed Fran classic figure/ground illusions, for example an image that simultaneously shows faces and a vase. Fran reported seeing both the faces and the vase at the same, with no alternation between them. The third-person measure—Fran's response to the illusion—was used to corroborate Fran's first-person reports.
Other studies can be done incorporating third-person data, for example neuroimaging studies.[23][24][25][26] For example, samples of inner speaking while in an MRI scanner correlated with activation in classic speech processing areas including the left inferior frontal gyrus.[27]
Other evidence for validity could come from participants being helped by the DES process. For example, after sampling, Fran was able to control intrusive thoughts better. Other participants have gained better clarity over their inner life and relationships.[28] Outcomes like these can be part of the interlocking system of observables, even if they aren't, in themselves, proof of validity.
Criticism
For some, DES, despite its efforts, doesn't overcome issues of first-person reporting including biases and memory constraints. For example, Eric Schwitzgebel sees first-person reporting as still too subject to distortion.[29] Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel have addressed these criticisms in a book where Hurlburt conducts DES with a participant. Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel then discuss the potential limitations of the method.
Another line of criticism is that DES doesn't go far enough in uncovering certain aspects of experience. For example, its narrow temporal scope might leave out certain temporally extended phenomena.[30] Or its lack of directing participants' awareness could mean it misses certain nuances of experience.[31]
Hurlburt acknowledges that DES samples can be incomplete and may miss some elements of experience.[32] To him, being confident of reported elements is more important than capturing all possible elements in experience.