Table 2.

Themes from four open-format survey questions.

Question	Themes	Examples
How is your tracking related to managing or treating your mental illness? (n = 19) [conditional question]	Correlation between behaviors and mental illness	“I track my yoga workouts, and I do yoga specifically to help manage my anxiety and stress.” (P212)
	Indirect measurement of mental health	“trying to understand impact of sleep; exercise diet on mood.” (P232)
	Treatment tracking (medication, schedule)	“...I do my best to track which medications I have taken when.” (P52)
	Adjustments	“I track my period so that I know how to increase my medication doses. About a week before my period shout start, I take a higher dose of my anxiety medication.” (P243)
	Triggers; finding signals that something is out of equilibrium	“Tracking exercise/sleep and caffeine intake to minimize triggers.” (P127)
How is your tracking related to managing or treating your chronic illness? (n = 13) [conditional question]	Measuring a physical indicator (status, progress)	“Need to track blood glucose and [blood] pressure to ensure diabetes and hypertension are both controlled.” (P139)
	Decision-making (lifestyle, medication)	“Have to make sure my blood pressure stays below a certain number while also making healthy life decisions.” (P219)
	Managing schedules	“Blood tests and… regular medications.” (P267)
	Symptom control	“Checking glucose levels to ensure they remain at a normal level.” (P77)
	Hypothesizing about triggers	“I write down all occurrences of headaches in an attempt to figure out the cause.” (P14)
What would you consider your main goal or motivation for tracking? (n = 269)	Understanding personal limits or ranges	“To know how strong I am so I don’t hurt myself, but keep progressing at a maximum speed toward getting stronger.” (P153)
	Sustainability of behaviors and goals (setting the right goal, expectations, predictions)	“Figuring out what I can do to decrease my weight (i.e. what works).” (P138)
	Hypothesis testing & understanding relationships	“I’d like to be able to prevent migraines by understanding my set of triggers as well as possible.” (P135)
	Motivation through data (rewards, competition, fun)	“Keeps me going to the gym so that I can fill progress bars.” (P49)
	Performance	“Keeping track of my running pace and mileage - to get faster and go longer.” (P58)
	Social goals	“Competition with friends.” (P68)
	Appearance-related goals	“A personal drive to look my very best.” (P21)
	Being mindful about health	“To…be aware of my health.” (P182)
	Improvements vs. maintenance	“Losing weight at first, then just generally staying healthy and eating right once I noted it made me feel better in general.” (P3)
What was it [in the data] that you felt reflected something negative about you? (n = 97) [conditional question]	Disconnect between data and one’s reaction to the data	“I felt that the results were not to the best of my ability even though each workout was... I was disappointed in the [amount of] activity I could achieve.” (P43)
	Social pressures and stigma; embarrassment	“At times I felt embarrassed for having to be so dependent on my large amount of medicines.” (P7)
	Guilt and disappointment	“I felt unhappy with how I slipped into unhealthy eating habits and how it reflected in my body.” (P92)
	Laziness (physical activity related, not productivity)	“Sometimes my weight increases (if [I] skip [going to the] gym for a while or eat a lot), so it reflects laziness/lack of seriousness on my part.” (P64)
	Lack or reversal of progress and gains, despite effort; failure to achieve a goal	“I felt the graph of my progress showed how I reversed on my progress.” (P182)
	Lack of control over changes; lack of self-control	“Sometimes I splurged on high-calorie food.” (P63)
	Inconsistency	“It showed that I wasn't as active as I should be, and that I wasn't consistent in the amount of steps I got each day.” (P148)
	Revealing an unhealthy or unexpected habit or behavior	“[I]nitially, I was surprised by how bad my eating habits were and how vastly I had underestimated my calorie intake.” (P3)