The Experience Sampling Method in the research on achievement-related emotions and motivation

Motivation and emotions fluctuate across learning situations and contexts. That makes it necessary to assess and analyze their processes of change, along with its situated and context-specific sources of variation. A method to assess the situation- and context-specificity and fluctuation of emotions and motivation is the experience sampling method (ESM). The ESM produces intensive longitudinal data with many measurement time points per person (see Figure 12.1). Typically, participants are surveyed repeatedly during their day about their current emotions or motivational states with self-report surveys on portable devices, such as smartphones.This chapter discusses the ESM for both beginners and advanced researchers. It starts with an introduction to the ESM, referencing useful resources to researchers interested in applying the ESM in their own studies of emotion and motivation in education. Then, the contribution of the ESM to the recent and expected future theoretical shifts towards situated models of motivation and emotions are discussed. We give an overview of current innovations in the research with the ESM and address current challenges in this field, including limitations to the replicability and generalizability of ESM studies across contexts. First, solutions to these challenges are proposed; second, directions for future research are presented in the appendix.