Feasibility of Text Messaging for Ecological Momentary Assessment of Marijuana Use in College Students

Measuring self-reported substance use behavior is challenging due to issues related to memory recall and patterns of bias in estimating behavior. Limited research has focused on the use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to evaluate marijuana use. This study assessed the feasibility of using short message service (SMS) texting as a method of EMA with college-age marijuana users. Our goals were to evaluate overall response/compliance rates and trends of data missingness, response time, baseline measures (e.g., problematic use) associated with compliance rates and response times, and differences between EMA responses of marijuana use compared to timeline followback (TLFB) recall. Nine questions were texted to participants on their personal cell phones 3 times a day over a 2-week period. Overall response rate was high (89%). When examining predictors of the probability of data missingness with a hierarchical logistic regression model, we found evidence of a higher propensity for missingness for Week 2 of the study compared to Week 1. Self-regulated learning was significantly associated with an increase in mean response time. A model fit at the participant level to explore response time found that more time spent smoking marijuana related to higher response times, while more time spent studying and greater "in the moment" academic motivation and craving were associated with lower response times. Significant differences were found between the TLFB and EMA, with greater reports of marijuana use reported through EMA. Overall, results support the feasibility of using SMS text messaging as an EMA method for college-age marijuana users.