Next to the Student Mapping Study, another EMA-study just started within NSMD. PhD candidate Gita Nadinda from Leiden University will be including thirty people with chronic low back pain in the coming months.
The (Dutch) study is called ‘Pijnnetwerken’ (pain networks) and works with Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). EMA stands for the repeated sampling of a person’s current behaviours and experiences in real time, in their natural environments. Several times a day, people will be asked a list of questions through their smart phones, during a couple of weeks. Nadinda explains: “The questions are for example about their pain, expectancies, avoidance, fatigue and other psychological factors.” She aims to analyse the data using the network approach, since that’s what NSMD is all about: testing whether treatment based on the network of a person’s symptoms is more promising than the current diagnoses driven therapies.
Participants need to visit the Leiden lab once, so they preferably live in that region. Their back pain needs to be officially diagnosed and persistent for at least three months. More information about inclusion criteria and contact details in the (Dutch) information letter .