Application of the Network Psychometric Framework to Measurement Burst Designs

Network Psychometrics emerged in the last years as an approach that allows investigating how different elements of a system interact and how these interactions change across occasions. The present work aims to show the potentialities of the Network Psychometric framework to examine the stability of dynamics of change of psychological processes. Specifically, we tested the applicability of the recently introduced psychonetrics toolbox to (a) model within-subjects (both contemporaneous and temporal) and between-subject (stable individual differences) dynamics with data collected with a measurement burst design (MBD, two 14-day bursts); and (b) examine the temporal stability (or instability) of the process’ dynamics by directly comparing the two bursts in terms of both within and between parameters’ invariance. The illustrative example was about the process of meaning-making, whose dynamics of change were examined across two different contextual conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. A step-by-step procedure to apply psychonetrics to MBDs is provided in an Open Science Framework project.