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Survey research is a cornerstone of psychology. With questionnaires and similar instruments, psychology researchers can gain invaluable insights into how mental health disorders, substance use disorders, trauma, and other issues affect people’s day-to-day lives. These tools are equally useful in creating and validating coping strategies and other interventions.

However, surveys and questionnaires aren’t without their limitations. Having published dozens of peer-reviewed works on alcohol consumption, sexual behavior, and more, Roselyn Peterson, PhD, clinical faculty and research director of ���Ĵ�ý’s Doctor of Clinical Psychology program, is all too familiar with such issues.

“One of the largest issues is participants having difficulty with retrospective memory and thinking back on things that happened,” Peterson says.

As Peterson explains, surveys are often administered after the phenomenon being studied has occurred, sometimes weeks or months later. This means that participants might forget how they felt in the moment or whether they employed any strategies to stay safe, weakening insights that could be gained from their experiences.

This challenge may seem insurmountable, but over the course of her career, Peterson has employed a technique that overcomes it: ecological momentary assessment (EMA). With this unique tool, Peterson is helping bridge the gap between what researchers know and what clinical practitioners do.

What Is Ecological Momentary Assessment?

An ecological momentary assessment is a series of questions or prompts that gather information about a person’s current mental state or recent behaviors. In the context of Peterson’s work, an EMA might include questions such as, “How many drinks have you consumed tonight?” or “Have you consumed more standard drinks tonight than planned?” or “Did you use a designated driver?”

The difference between an EMA and a standard psychological survey is that an EMA is administered in the moment and in participants’ natural environments, rather than afterward or in a clinical setting—eliminating the retrospective memory complications.

“If study participants are going to a football game, we send a push notification or a text with a link to a survey to their phone while they’re out at the football game,” Peterson explains. “It doesn’t require the participant to think back. That provides really truthful insights.”

According to Peterson, EMAs are helpful for assessing behaviors that are easily influenced by social factors or interventions. That being said, Peterson says after-the-fact surveys can still be vital to these areas of psychological and behavioral research. Analyzing discrepancies between what a participant felt in the moment and what they remember feeling the next day can add invaluable nuance to psychology professionals’ understanding of mood, behavior, and mental health disorders. 

Turning EMA Insights Into Evidence-Based Safety Strategies

Peterson first encountered EMAs as a graduate student in the late 2010s. She was helping one of her peers use EMAs to study people’s moods and mental states as they battle binge eating.

“I remember thinking, this is really cutting edge,” Peterson says. “This is going to be helpful for understanding what is actually happening in those moments and how we can intervene.”

With that hope in mind, Peterson has continued to use EMAs in her own work on validating and assessing protective behavioral strategies surrounding alcohol use and adverse sexual experiences.

Validating Protective Behavioral Strategies

Protective behavioral strategies are harm-reduction techniques a person can use to reduce or avoid some of the dangerous consequences of behaviors such as alcohol or drug use. Examples include drinking water between alcoholic beverages, setting a drink limit, or going out with trusted friends.

“With my specific area of interest, the intersection of alcohol use and dating and sexual behaviors, the prevention of sexual violence is what I’m working toward,” Peterson says of her motivation to focus on EMAs and protective behavioral strategies. She said she believes these tools will be increasingly helpful as technology advances.

For example, Peterson dedicated her doctoral dissertation to assessing and developing a new way to measure the dating and sexual protective behaviors that young adults use in today’s app-based landscape.

“Dating these days is so different from what it was even five or 10 years ago,” she says. “It’s all app-based. There’s location sharing now and other ways people can keep themselves safer, but none of this has been really studied since Tinder and Hinge and all those things came out. Even some of the earlier online dating platforms, like eHarmony—those were never really researched from a behavioral standpoint.”

After collecting data via ecological momentary assessments and meeting with the college-aged participants, Peterson was pleased to find that many of them already used the protective behavioral strategies that she integrated into the study. Just as importantly, she found that strategies such as location sharing are in fact effective, giving modern safe dating practices a clinical, evidence-based edge.

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice

While the bulk of Peterson’s research focuses on protective behavioral strategies, she devotes equal energy to ensuring that her work is accessible to people who need it.

“I do a lot of dissemination and implementation research, which studies how we bridge that gap between what researchers find and what clinicians are doing in community mental health agencies,” she says. “It’s been found that it takes 17 years for research findings to get implemented. Narrowing that gap is what we’re hoping for. We want to find ways to get even the smallest bits of information to clinicians and the public; for instance, saying ‘Hey, did you know that protective behaviors can be really helpful and reduce negative consequences?’”

Accomplishing that goal means equipping clinical psychologists and other frontline professionals with the skills to find, analyze, and apply new research. As of Bryant’s Doctor of Clinical Psychology program, Peterson prepares rising students to do just that.

“Right now, the students [in our first cohort] are finishing the second semester of their first year, so we’re doing the Research Design and Methods class, which I’m teaching,” she says. “We want our students to know and appreciate where evidence for their therapy and treatments is coming from.”

New Facilities for New Skill Development

In addition to learning about research under Peterson, students in Bryant’s Doctor of Clinical Psychology program further sharpen their skills by completing a doctoral research project in their areas of interest. This all happens in Bryant’s new Psychology Research Center, which opened in 2025 alongside the program launch. The center gives students the space and resources to work on individual and group projects, record themselves and get feedback as they practice their clinical practice skills, and more.

“I think one of the biggest benefits for students is they feel like they have an academic home,” Peterson says of the facility. “It really gives them that sense of, ‘I belong here.’”

Peterson, who arrived at Bryant in mid 2025, also feels that sense of belonging and gets the support she needs to keep conducting and disseminating potentially lifesaving research.

“There are still times when I’m driving onto campus or driving to work, and I think, ‘Wow, I still can’t believe I have this job.’ I think I’ll probably feel that way for a very long time,” she says. “It’s so freeing to be able to teach the things I’m really passionate about because that just makes it more enjoyable and easier to do. I think the students are sort of realizing that, as well.”

Bring New Clinical Mental Health Services to Your Community

In Bryant’s Doctor of Clinical Psychology program, students prepare to become behavioral health providers capable of serving populations of all kinds. Whether students are learning new skills in the classroom or completing their yearlong doctoral internship, they get personalized support from impassioned, forward-thinking faculty such as Roselyn Peterson.

“Bryant’s PsyD program is much more focused on the students because we have smaller cohorts compared to other PsyD programs,” Peterson says of Bryant’s learning environment. “Most are between 40 to 60 students a year. Ours are 20. We really keep it more focused and distilled to individual learning.” 

Peterson also believes that Bryant’s dedication to incorporating research techniques alongside core clinical instruction is a differentiating factor in the program. “It’s really important to us to make sure the students are aware of what research is, and how to conduct studies,” she says. 

To find out more about the curriculum, optional degree concentrations, and other facets of the program, request information from Bryant today.