Challenges and Potentials of Capturing Short-term Dynamics of Attitude Development through Smartphone-based Intensive Longitudinal Methods in Public Opinion Research (SmartDyn)

This project delves into the methodological challenges and analytical potentials of smartphone-based intensive longitudinal data collection designs for research on the development of political attitudes over short periods of time. For this purpose, a data collection during the election campaign of the 2025 Federal Election in Germany serves as a case study. Traditional survey methods face methodological challenges in capturing respondents' information consumption, media exposure, and social network discussions regarding politics. In contrast, smartphone-based data collections using intensive longitudinal designs offer a promising solution, allowing for real-time surveying and collecting novel data types to analyze the dynamics of information exposure and attitude formation. However, the design and implementation of such smartphone-based studies are still novel to the fields of public opinion research, political science, and political psychology. The main objectives of this project include systematically investigating the implications of methodological variations in the implementation of a smartphone-based intensive longitudinal study for participant recruitment and retention, participants’ survey experience, and data quality, as well as assessing the analytic potential of enhancing survey data with new data formats resulting from app-based data collection to describe and explain dynamic developments during electoral campaigns. The project belongs to the DFG Infrastructure Priority Programme “New Data Spaces for the Social Sciences”