Agency Lens: Epistemic Agency in Self-Tracking

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents. According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), an agency-based framework meaningfully distinguishes mere measurement from self-directed knowledge production in self-tracking. According to the Frontiersin.org review (search April–May 2025), the authors screened 721 records and retained 241 papers for full review, of which 46 used self-tracking as the data-collection method. This post translates the Frontiersin.org conceptual literature review by Sara Riggare into step-by-step guidance for AI-enabled qualitative research teams who want to surface epistemic agency in personal science projects.

Key Takeaways

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), epistemic agency in self-tracking turns on “who owns the question” and separates low-agency measurement from high-agency personal science.

April–May 2025 literature search: 721 unique records retrieved, 241 full papers retained, and 46 articles used self-tracking as the data-collection method, according to Frontiersin.org.
Among the 46 self-tracking articles, Frontiersin.org classified 17 as low agency, 10 as mixed agency, and 19 as high agency, showing a full spectrum of participant control in peer-reviewed literature.
According to Frontiersin.org, high-agency personal science cases often list the self-tracker as a co-author and emphasize sharing methods and learnings rather than only raw data.
The Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026) summarizes that supporting personal science requires infrastructure, recognition, and ethical guidance to scale individual knowledge production responsibly.

What Happened and How the Framework Works

Answer: The Frontiersin.org conceptual review (published 18 August 2026) applied a four-phase framework (Questioning, Observing, Reasoning, Discovering) and three agency levels (low, mixed, high) to characterize self-tracking scholarship.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (methods reported April–May 2025), the authors adapted the personal science cycle into four phases because they found Designing and Observing to be tightly interwoven in practice.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), the study used independent dual-author review to classify papers and resolved reviewer disagreements by group discussion, with 13% of abstracts requiring conflict resolution at screening and 17% of detailed categorizations requiring author consultation.

The Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026) stresses epistemic agency as a capacity: as Catherine Elgin wrote and the review cites, "Epistemic agents should think of themselves as, and act as, legislating members of a realm of epistemic ends: they make the rules, devise the methods, and set the standards that bind them" (Catherine Elgin, cited in Frontiersin.org).

Findings Snapshot

Date / Period	Metric	Value	Implication
April–May 2025	Records retrieved in search for "quantified self"	721 records	Large, heterogeneous literature prompting framework-based synthesis (Frontiersin.org)
April–May 2025	Full papers retained	241 papers	Corpus for conceptual analysis and classification (Frontiersin.org)
Included corpus	Papers using self-tracking as data-collection	46 articles	Subset analyzed for agency across four phases (Frontiersin.org)
Included corpus	Agency breakdown among 46 self-tracking articles	17 low, 10 mixed, 19 high	Demonstrates full agency spectrum in peer-reviewed literature (Frontiersin.org)
Publication year trend	Peak year for "quantified self" articles	2018: 38 articles	Historical peak with renewed uptick in 2024 (Frontiersin.org)

Implications for qualitative researchers and UX teams

Answer: Qualitative researchers and UX teams should treat the presence of self-tracking data as a signal to assess epistemic agency, not as evidence of participant empowerment by default.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), low-agency studies treat participants as data sources while high-agency studies show full cycles where participants define questions, analyze results, and sometimes co-author publications.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), when aiming to support personal science, researchers should document who formulated the question, how observations were designed, what reasoning steps were open to participants, and whether the participant articulated discoveries.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), mixed-agency contexts commonly show co-produced interpretation: researchers should therefore design qualitative protocols that capture both mediated reflections and autonomous interpretations.

How Evidano Helps Research Teams Assess Epistemic Agency

Problem: Hard to tell measurement from personal science

Answer: Teams often cannot distinguish low-agency data collection from high-agency personal science without structured coding of phases and ownership.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), the key analytical distinction is “who owns the question, ” which qualitative teams must operationalize when coding interviews, methods sections, and participant artifacts.

Solution: Thematic + phase-oriented coding with Evidano

Answer: Evidano can automate and accelerate phase-oriented thematic analysis so teams can identify Questioning, Observing, Reasoning, and Discovering in transcripts and documents.

Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents; teams can ingest transcripts, device logs, and methods write-ups and run thematic and cross-segment analyses to tag agency phases automatically.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), high-agency cases are often identifiable by co-authorship and method-sharing; Evidano helps surface co-authorship signals and method-sharing language across a corpus for rapid classification.

Use case: import 241 documents or a selected subset, train a custom codebook that includes the four personal science phases, then run frequency and co-occurrence reports to quantify how often participants are doing each phase (Questioning, Observing, Reasoning, Discovering).

Learn more about features that support this workflow on the Evidano features page: Evidano features.

Solution: Preserve privacy while analyzing personal data

Answer: Evidano supports PII redaction and encrypted storage so ethical, participant-led projects can be analyzed without exposing sensitive health details.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), ethical infrastructure is crucial because personal science often falls outside formal oversight; Evidano's PII tools and secure analytics help teams meet this need while enabling participant agency.

FAQ: epistemic agency in self-tracking

What is epistemic agency in self-tracking and why does it matter?

Answer: Epistemic agency in self-tracking means the individual controls the question, data collection, analysis, and articulation of findings, not merely supplying data to others.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), epistemic agency matters because it determines whether self-tracking produces actionable self-knowledge (personal science) or only contributes to researcher-driven datasets.

How did the Frontiers review measure levels of agency?

Answer: The Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026) used a four-phase framework (Questioning, Observing, Reasoning, Discovering) and assigned low, mixed, or high agency based on who performed each phase.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (methods April–May 2025), the authors read 241 full papers and identified 46 where self-tracking was the data collection method, then coded each of the four phases for participant vs. researcher ownership.

What practical signs indicate a high-agency personal science study?

Answer: Practical signs of high-agency work include participant-formulated questions, participant-led measurement choices, participant participation in analysis, and participant-authored dissemination.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), high-agency cases often list the self-tracker as a co-author and emphasize sharing of methods, learnings, and experiences rather than only raw data.

Can AI help distinguish agency levels in a corpus of studies?

Answer: Yes, AI-enabled qualitative analysis can scale phase-based coding and surface linguistic markers of ownership and co-authorship across large corpora.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), classification required reading and conservative coding decisions; AI tools like Evidano can reproduce those decision rules at scale and quantify patterns for teams.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Answer: The Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026) shows that assessing epistemic agency requires a structured phase-based approach and that many "quantified self" articles do not reflect the participatory core of personal science.

According to the Frontiersin.org review (published 18 August 2026), bridging measurement and personal science needs infrastructure, ethical guidance, and analytic tools to document who owns each phase of inquiry.

If you want to scale phase-oriented, participant-centered analysis across interviews, device logs, and methods documents, Evidano can help you operationalize the Questioning–Observing–Reasoning–Discovering framework and preserve participant privacy.

Get started and Try Evidano for free.

Quotation: the Frontiersin.org review (Sara Riggare et al.) emphasizes “who owns the question, ” and the review cites Catherine Elgin that epistemic agents should “make the rules, devise the methods, and set the standards that bind them.”

Topics

epistemic agency in self-tracking
personal science qualitative analysis
quantified self research
AI-enabled qualitative research

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