Practitioner perspectives on the use of the experience sampling software in counseling and clinical psychology

Facilitating the uptake and making better use of technological advances will be pivotal for counseling and clinical psychology to respond to the rising call for more community-based and person-centred care. While the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), a structured self-report digital diary, could help facilitate this transition, it is currently unclear how practitioners envision using ESM in clinical practice. Therefore, we organised focus groups with 36 mental health practitioners (M-age = 39.37, SDage = 12.18, 58.33% female) across Flanders (Belgium). Four broad topics were discussed: (1) how to use ESM, (2) how to visualise clinically relevant information, (3) the software requirements thereof, and (4) barriers and facilitators for implementing ESM in clinical practice. Thematic analysis was conducted and Cohen's Kappa was calculated (kappa = .79). Different clinical applications emerged, such as screening, evaluating the effectiveness of therapy, and elucidating determinants of mental health problems in daily life. However, practitioners also expressed difficulty determining how to visualise ESM data, and novel features for use emerged (e.g. integration with electronic health records). Various barriers (e.g. lack of best-practice guidelines) and facilitators (e.g. simplicity) were identified, with the implications of these findings for future clinical implementation studies discussed.