Descriptive Experience Sampling: A Method for Exploring Momentary Inner Experience

Abstract

Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is a method developed to provide high fidelity accounts of pristine inner experience. A DES investigator gives a subject a random beeper to take into her natural environments. When the beep sounds, the subject jots down notes about her ongoing experience. The subject repeats this process, typically collecting about six moments of experience in a sampling day. Within 24 hours the investigator interviews the subject. During this expositional interview subject and investigator collaborate to develop high fidelity accounts of each sampled moment of experience. This process is repeated over a number of days until an idiographic description of the subject's inner experience has been developed. DES is open-ended, qualitative, and minimally retrospective. Because of the close examination of brief moments of experience, DES is capable of providing highly detailed accounts of inner experience. We summarize some important DES results and contrast DES with the methods of van Manen and Moustakas.

Keywords:

• Descriptive Experience Sampling
• inner experience
• qualitative methods
• subjective experience

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher L. Heavey

Christopher L. Heavey is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He uses Descriptive Experience Sampling to explore inner experience.

Russell T. Hurlburt

Russell T. Hurlburt was the first to use beepers in psychological research and is the originator of Descriptive Experience Sampling. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Noelle L. Lefforge

Noelle L. Lefforge recently received her doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has used Descriptive Experience Sampling to examine the experience of depression and emotion.