ISOQOL 2004 Symposium
"Stating the Art: Advancing Outcomes Research Methodology and Clinical Applications"
June 27-29, 2004
Boston Park Plaza Hotel
Boston, MA, USA

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Session 7: Experience Sampling and Daily Process Analysis
Presenters: Howard Tennen and Alex Zautra
Chair: William Lenderking

Exploring Patient Outcomes as Daily Processes: The Promise and the Challenge
Howard Tennen, PhD
Professor, Department of Community Medicine and Health Care, University of CT Health Center, Farmington, CT

Patient outcomes emerge over time during the course of their everyday lives. Daily process outcomes research captures these temporally unfolding dynamics by emphasizing proximal events and experiences; measuring real-time change in rapidly fluctuating processes; minimizing random and systematic recall error; revealing individual differences in the temporal patterning of emotions, coping and symptoms; and strengthening our causal inferences. Through examples of daily process studies of chronic pain, alcohol use, and depression, Dr. Tennen will demonstrate how the application of daily process models enhance our description of outcomes, generate and test outcome-related hypotheses, and provide the basis for understanding the mechanisms of action of behavioral and pharmacological interventions.

Emotions, Stress and Health in Everyday Life
Alex Zautra, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

In this talk, Professor Zautra expands on themes of resilience he introduced in his recent book, Emotions, Stress, and Health (Oxford University Press) through an examination of dynamic processes that influence the quality of everyday life. He will present data on how daily stressars, counterbalanced by positive interpersonal events influence emotional well-being and shape the capacity of patients so to sustain quality of life in the face of chronic pain.