DOI: 10.1177/27000710261499574 ISSN: 2700-0710

My Personality––Wrapped: Protocol for a Measurement-Burst Design Study to Investigate the Development and Dynamics of Individual Differences Across Time

Amanda J. Wright, Peter Haehner, Michael D. Krämer, Nicholas P. Tan, Christopher J. Hopwood, Wiebke Bleidorn

People and their environments continuously shape one another across time. Understanding person-environment transactions is essential for describing, predicting, and explaining the dynamics and development of individual differences. Yet, progress on this has been constrained by two common limitations: study designs driven by practical rather than theoretical considerations and neglecting how person-environment processes unfold across multiple timescales. Here, we present the rationale and design of the My Personality––Wrapped (MPW) Study, a measurement-burst study designed to investigate how individual differences in personality, well-being, attitudes, social and interpersonal behaviors, and health develop and dynamically fluctuate alongside environmental influences across multiple timescales. Across 1 year, participants ( N max = 1,230) completed baseline (T0) and post-study (T6) assessment batteries, five bimonthly surveys (T1–T5), and 15 pseudorandomly scheduled 1-week bursts comprising mobile sensing, experience sampling, daily, and weekly surveys. This intensive, multi-method study provides comprehensive cross-timescale data on psychological constructs and contextual experiences. The MPW Study is designed to advance the field’s understanding of temporal dynamics underlying individual differences by disentangling within-person processes from between-person differences, facilitating theory development and testing of multi-timescale person-environment transactions, and informing future theory-driven research on the dynamics of personality and well-being, social and health processes, and life disruptions.

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