Occasions
This article is about the occasions—also referred to as time points—at which you measure the process you want to study. When setting up an ILD study, you have to make various decisions that concern the temporal nature of your sampling design. Important aspects of this are:
- The timing of your measurements, for instance, whether this is at regular or irregular time intervals
- The length of the (average) time interval between measurements
- The number of repeated measures
These decisions are often made in combination with decisions about the time frame of your item, that is, the period of time that the measurement refers to (e.g., “In the past hour…”). These are key aspects of your temporal design which determine the total time span of your study. Your temporal design determines the coverage of temporal patterns, and the granularity of your temporal lens.
In addition, the total number of measurement occasions per case determines what kind of analysis may be appropriate or not, and will also play a role in terms of the power of your analysis, the reliability of the estimates, or the precision of your predictions.
1 Takeaway
The number, timing, and framing of measurements are important for accurately capturing patterns in your process of interest.
2 Further reading
We have collected various topics for you to read more about below.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant awarded to E. L. Hamaker (ERC-2019-COG-865468).
Citation
@article{berkhout2025,
author = {Berkhout, Sophie W.},
title = {Occasions},
journal = {MATILDA},
number = {2025-05-23},
date = {2025-05-23},
url = {https://matilda.fss.uu.nl/articles/occasions.html},
langid = {en}
}