The distinction between events and context
This article is about the distinction between events and context, and why it is essential to consider this distinction in your study based on intensive longitudinal data (ILD). Thinking clearly about the difference between events and contexts is important when you are choosing a temporal design and deciding how to measure a process, but it is also relevant in thinking about how to analyze your ILD, and how to relate the results you obtain to your research question.
ILD studies aim to track psychological processes as they unfold in real time, either in a lab setting or in daily life. These processes do not exist in isolation: They are influenced by what happens around the individual—be it a conversation, a noisy café, or a demanding job. These external influences can differ widely in duration, intensity, and function. Understanding whether we are dealing with an event or a context helps researchers decide how to measure, model, and interpret these influences in line with their theoretical framework.
In this article, you will find: 1) definitions of events and contexts, and an explanation of how these are tied to your theory about the process of interest; and 2) various arguments for treating an influence as an event versus a context.
1 Defining events and context
In the study of psychological processes using ILD designs, it is crucial to distinguish between events and contexts—two concepts expressing how external influences shape within-person variability of the process you are interested in. External can refer to both physical occurrences or additional psychological and cognitive processes; therefore, they can only be defined relative to your theory about a process.
For example, if you have a broad definition of stress in daily life as a system consisting of multiple cognitive, affective, and physiological sub-processes, then an external event or context could be defined as anything that happens “outside of the person”, such as triggering encounters at work. If, on the other hand, you have a more narrow definition of stress as the conscious experience of anxiety (i.e., measured using the item “How anxious do you feel right now?”), then cognitive or hormonal processes can be seen as external to the process of interest.
As explained below, the primary difference between events and contexts is their duration. This is always relative to the time span and granularity of your study, as explained below.
1.1 Events: Discrete shocks
An event is a discrete external occurrence that acts as a shock or perturbation to a psychological process. Events are typically specific to distinct occasions within a study. When using self-report, events have to be consciously experienced by participants, such that they can be reported in an ILD study.
Events can be considered as an influence on a process, while it is not inherent to that process. Yet, the way that the process you are interested in responds to an event can be considered an important feature of that process. For instance, when tracking an individual’s stress levels over time (e.g., with and item like “How anxious do you feel right now?”), neither the negative work meeting nor the memory of said meeting are per se parts of the stress process. But the intensity of the effect that these external shocks have on an individual’s momentary stress level is.
The reactions to [events can be studied] by looking at the contrasts between occasions that are associated with an event versus occasions without the event. For instance, you may be interested in determining how a process changes right after an event occurred.
1.2 Context: Enduring conditions
In contrast, a [context] refers to a more enduring set of conditions during which a psychological process unfolds. Contexts can be both, enduring long-term conditions that emerge from the accumulation or sustained presence of events (e.g., a high-stress job environment), or a short-term discrete event during which a process is observed (e.g., being in a meeting). It is therefore relevant at what timescale you are studying the process of interest.
Some psychological processes are actually conditional on a context, in that they only exist in a particular context. For example, being sociable in daily life is a process that is only measurable during relevant contexts (Andresen et al., 2024; Kritzler et al., 2023), because it represents a specific interpersonal action that cannot occur in absence of a social context. That is, a context can sometimes be seen as a necessary condition for a behavior that is relevant to study. For such contexts, it is not possible to assess the response in a process to the context, because the process seizes to exist when the context is absent.
2 When should you consider it an event versus a context?
From the above, it is clear that an important difference between events and contexts is their temporal nature: When the external factor is short-lived, it is considered an event, whereas if it lasts longer, it is considered a context. But whether something is short-lived or lasts longer, very much depends on how much you zoom in or out (Klonek et al., 2018); it thus depends on your temporal lens, which is shaped by your temporal design. Hence, the distinction between events and contexts is absolute in nature.
It is therefore important that you think about the kind of relation between a process and an external influence that you are interested in. For example, if you are specifically interested in how a work meeting impacts stress experience throughout the day, it might be most informative to study a person’s reaction or contrast to events (here: work meetings). If you are instead interested in identifying individual differences in situation-bound behaviors, or even behaviors that are conditional on a a particular situation (e.g., being sociable), it is probably more natural to consider distinct contexts. Essentially, the main question you can ask yourself to determine whether your research question concerns an event or a context is: Am I interested in how my process of interest varies in response to or during the situation in question?
Note that the same situation can appear either as an event or as a context depending on the temporal resolution of your measurements and the duration of your study. For example, attending a work party may be considered an event if your study collects data a few times per day over a week, it is a distinct, memorable occurrence that stands out in the collected data. However, if you zoom in and collect data every few minutes over several hours, that same party may function as a context, as it is an ongoing social situation in which interpersonal behaviors and affect unfold. Similarly, a series of negative work interactions may appear as individual stressful events in a short-term ESM study, but when you zoom out and observe a much longer time span with your study, these events might accumulate into a more stable context of a hostile work environment.
Hence, you should consider the temporal lens in combination with your theory about context and events. If your measurements are more densely spaced in time, and the study duration is longer, you have more flexibility in conceptualizing the same experiences as either a time-limited shock or as part of a sustained condition. Deciding on an appropriate timescale should therefore go hand in hand with clarifying your substantive interest in when and how a process unfolds in relation to external influences.
3 Takeaway
In ILD research, deciding whether a situation should be treated as an event or a context is not just a matter of terminology: It has direct consequences for how you theorize, measure, and model psychological processes.
This distinction depends on the process definition, the research question, and the timescale that you want to focus on in your study. Events are typically used to model reactions in terms of changes in the process after something happened; contexts describe the conditions under which a process unfolds or becomes observable. This distinction is not absolute, and depends on how much you zoom in or out. When you zoom in a lot, an event can become a context. When you zoom out a lot, a series of events can form a context (Klonek et al., 2018).
Making thoughtful choices about how situations are conceptualized ensures that ILD studies capture the dynamics of everyday life in a way that matches their theoretical intent.
4 Further Reading
We have collected various topics for you to read more about below.
- [Assessing events]
- [Assessing contexts]
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant awarded to E. L. Hamaker (ERC-2019-COG-865468).
References
Citation
@article{andresen2025,
author = {Andresen, Pia K.},
title = {The Distinction Between Events and Context},
journal = {MATILDA},
number = {2025-05-23},
date = {2025-05-23},
url = {https://matilda.fss.uu.nl/articles/events-versus-contexts.html},
langid = {en}
}