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Experience sampling methods for mental health research in intellectual disability2437study findings. For example, a participant may report feeling annoyed in response to a prompt because of the prompt itself, and not because they had a negative mood due to another situation. Asking participants about their experiences with participating in the study, such as by debriefing interviews, may give some insight in the reliability of the study findings and explain potentially low study compliance.According to the interviews, participants recognised the value of using experience sampling to keep support staff informed about their mood. Experience sampling might be used for monitoring and informing care, as it provides a quantitative evaluation of mental health from the client perspective. Until now, assessments of mental health using clinical rating scales or parent-reported questionnaires omitted patient perspectives about issues of relevance to their mental health. Additionally, it has been pointed out that the perception of individuals’ mental health by clinicians and clients themselves differ.29,30 The validity of proxy reflections of unobservable internal states is limited, as the personal perspective can only truly be understood by the individual’s self report.31 The use of experience sampling methods might thus be a user-friendly way to acquire information from the people with intellectual disabilities themselves, which is also encouraged by regulatory authorities such as the Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency.32,33 While the interviews pointed towards similar applications of experience sampling as a source of practice-based evidence, the scoping review did not turn up research in which experience sampling was evaluated on potential benefits for diagnosis and treatment. However, experience sampling methods can be used as an outcome measurement instrument for interventional studies to relate therapeutic findings to the self-evaluated mental functioning. Such research may build on the extensive tradition in the field of singlecase experimental designs, which have served the dual purpose of testing mechanisms of clinical change and clinical intervention.34 Due to the heterogeneity of the intellectual disability population, multiple data points are recommended in these types of studies to increase the study’s validity and to be able to observe fluctuations over time,34–36 which is enabled by experience sampling methods. Annelieke Muller sHL.indd 243 14-11-2023 09:07