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Quantified Self

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Synonyms

Health self-management; Lifelogging; n = 1 science; Personal data analytics; Self-experimentation; Self-tracking

Definition

The Quantified Self is a social health movement that began in San Francisco, California, in 2007, led by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine. The Quantified Self is an individual engaged in the self-tracking of any kind of biological, physical, behavioral, or environmental data. The attitude is a proactive stance toward obtaining information and acting on it, particularly to solve a problem. A variety of areas may be tracked and analyzed, for example, exercise, weight, energy level, mood, time usage, sleep quality, health, cognitive performance, and learning strategies (Fig. 1). Health is an important but nonexclusive focus, where objectives may include general tracking, pathology resolution, and peak performance. Regarding adoption, the quantified self is a broad phenomenon in the sense that 69% of US adults track a health indicator like...

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References and Further Reading

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Correspondence to Melanie Swan .

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Swan, M. (2019). Quantified Self. In: Gellman, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_101945-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_101945-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference MedicineReference Module Medicine

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