Diary Methods: Capturing Life as it is Lived

“The perils of retrospection have been reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson 1977, Ross 1989, Tourangeau et al. 2000).”

“As self-reporting instruments, diaries can be used repeatedly to capture and examine on-going experiences, and o ff er the possibility to analyse the sociocultural and material processes, within everyday situations (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“The diary method offers such a stimulus because it involves reflections on past or current decisions and thought processes that allow for introspection to incubate and elicit experiences (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“While extraneous items measuring the same construct can lead to redundancy and an ex-aggeration of slight differences between items (Bolger et al., 2003), it has been suggested that at least three items per construct is ideal for EMA psychometric assessment, and this opens opportunities for further…”

“We were specifically interested in what design qualities could emerge - what characteristics could be suitable for these tools and what not, and what design considerations are relevant? Diaries are amethod [1, 17] that involves participants self-reporting information about their behaviours, activities, and experiences…”

“It allows assessing dynamic processes in everyday life, detecting small changes, improving ecological validity, and reducing recall bias.(5,32,37) Thus, Study 2 used a daily diary methodology to reach the three objectives: 1.”

“These approaches draw on general concepts from diary methods (Bolger et al., 2003; Fleeson, 2004) where researchers seek to understand why a person’s behavior changes between situations and within a given situation.”

“, 1997), psychology (Bolger et al., 2003) and work studies (Travers, 2011) due to its ability to give voice and agency to respondents and facilitate the capture of ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz, 1973).”

“It enables intensive study over a limited period of participants ’ actions and psychological states, as well as where, when and for how long activities occurred (Bolger et al. 2003).”

“As reflective diary writing is vulnerable to the amount and quality of information provided by participants (Cucu-Oancea, 2013), the students received training on the requirements of completing the diary before the start of the project to maximise their understanding of the required protocol (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“In such methods, the researcher provides a clear definition of the types of events that are appropriate to document to meet the aims of the research (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Common methods include usability diaries (Bolger et al., 2003), the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) (Kahneman et al., 2004), DrawUX (Varsaluoma & Kentta, 2012), UX Curves (Kujala et al., 2011), iScale (Karapanos, Martens, et al., 2012), and CORPUS structured interviews.”

“In such cases, diary data can be used to shed light on how causal processes unfold within a person over time (Bolger et al., 2003; Neubauer & Schmiedek, 2020; Wickham & Knee, 2013).”

“For example, a longitudinal study employing semistructured interviews and a time-based diary method design (Bolger et al., 2003) could illustrate how independence, parental expectations, and life satisfaction fluctuate over time, the kinds of events that contribute to their variability, and how…”

“More generally, diaries are more than externalization of thinking; they become part of the process of sense-making itself (Bolger et al., 2003; Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010; Grossen, 2015; Zittoun &Gillespie, 2012, 2021).”

“Using an ecological assessment approach (Bolger et al., 2003), we examined the extent to which variability in daily affect predicted subsequent perceived regard over 3-weeks.”

“That being said, we believe this was a worthwhile trade-off, and previous studies have also made strategic decisions to reduce the burden associated with the participation in large-scale studies with reliable results (e.g. Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Our approach takes inspiration from several sources including behavioral sampling [1, 6], repetitive sketching techniques [7], and enactment of scenarios [8].”

“Diary studies are, in general, high in ecological validity (Bolger et al., 2003) and reduce recall biases that might have been present in Study 1.”

“Audio diaries also enable researchers to capture a worker’s identity construction in situ, as data collection occurs closer to a participant’s experience of an event than more retrospective methods like surveys (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Additionally, both self-endangering behaviours and quantitative stressors are inherently dynamic rather than stable (Vahle-Hinz et al., 2024), and should therefore be analysed at the within-person level (Bolger et al., 2003; Mehl & Conner, 2012).”

“This method has 70 , as it facilitates deeper engagement with the stimuli while maintaining experimental control.”

“Reflective activities are recognized across curricula, allowing learners to grapple with knowledge and lived experiences to create meaning, integrate thoughts, and build a deeper perspective (Brockbank & McGill, 1998; Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Future work could complement FGIs with ethnographic approaches such as diary studies [8] and longitudinal observation [52], particularly for participants who exhibit strong motivation toward music activities.”

“To extract student perceptions of AI-generated podcasts, we employed an explorative approach using a qualitative diary study and following best practices [5, 32].”

“Key strengths of diary studies include that they can estimate within-person changes, that is, how a person’s daily response compares to their average response across many days (Bolger et al., 2003) and they can examine temporal associations from one day to the next (Rubin & Campbell, 2012).”

“Thirdly, although diary studies enable realistic measurements while minimizing retrospective distortion (Almeida, 2005; Bolger et al., 2003), the survey conducted in the present study at the end of each day does not eliminate the possibility that teachers may not have been able to accurately report…”

“Diaries have previously proved to provide informants with freedom of expression as they are based on everyday encounters with news, compared to interviews, which might increase recall bias (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Using a daily diary design across a 2-week span, we reduced recall bias and improved ecological validity (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“…as daily diaries and ecological momentary assessment can further complement the existing literature by capturing emotional responses to specific types of stressful events as they naturally occur with reduced recall bias and high ecological validity (Bolger et al., 2003; Laurenceau & Bolger, 2005).”

“Utilising the daily diary method provides the unique advantage of capturing affective states and cognitive lapses in a naturalistic setting in real-time, minimising time lag and reducing recall bias [47,48].”

“Remote digital assessments have many advantages over traditional retrospective self-reports including reduced recall bias, the ability to obtain a more representative sample of behavior across situations and contexts, and the ability to track changes in behavior [15-17].”

“In other words, we were able to get closer to life as it is really lived (Bolger et al., 2003) and to better match our conceptualizations of mechanisms of change and fluctuation in parent phone use and mood with real-life data (Collins, 2006).”

“Although end-of-day measurements are typical in daily diary studies, such assessments can be subject to retrospective bias (Bolger et al., 2003), and thus, future work should consider assessing self-compassion at multiple timepoints within a day.”

“Using an experience sampling approach, we examine students’ real-time, personal reports that are recorded immediately after the negative event, which may provide a richer understanding of the specific details compared to traditional retrospective approaches (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Starting in late April 2020, we asked participants to audio-record a diary once or twice a week, for a minimum of 10 diaries over 12 weeks, a time-based approach to diary writing [36].”

“Therefore, it is crucial that we employ a daily diary approach to assess ER fl exibility because it provides a more ecologically valid means of understanding how individuals adapt their ER strategies in real-life situations (Bolger et al., 2003; Lischetzke & Könen, 2020; Shi ff man et al., 2008).”

“The diary design followed a time-based approach, incorporating elements of interval and signal designs, as well as event-based design (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“This limitation is unavoidable and requires complementary studies via experimental interventions (Bolger et al., 2003; Nezlek, 2020).”

“For the data to be reliable and valid, diary studies need a high level of participant commitment and dedication, which prompts questions about selection bias in the sampling (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“In line with best practice principles for experience sampling designs (Bolger et al., 2003), the selection of events was based on common daily stressors that can occur for coaches (Bentzen et al., 2016; Kaski & Kinnunen, 2021; Norris et al., 2017).”

“[21] mention 3 types of diaries, paper and pencil diary which were the first forms of diary used, the augmented paper diary which was improvised from a paper diary by using a reminder device as a sign for filling in the diary and the last are the handheld and electronic data collection that used technology and softwar…”

“[3], and a more extensive analysis, see [11]).”

“A study showed that the retrospective ratings of emotion are significantly higher compared to concurrent ratings for unpleasant conditions (Bruun and Ahm, 2015).”

“Experience sampling data share cross-sectional time-series characteristics containing a hierarchal structure, whereby measures are clustered in three levels: Beeps are nested in days which are nested within participants (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“These methodologies not only have the advantage of capturing a behaviour as it occurs spontaneously within a natural setting, increasing ecological validity and reducing recall bias, but they also allow the study of within-person variations in relation to people's own baseline (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“We assessed each type of desire regulation during sex with one item adapted from more general emotion regulation measures (Côté & Morgan, 2002; Gross & John, 2003), as is common in daily diary studies, to minimize participant attrition (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Following Bolger, Davis, and Rafaeli (2003) recommendations for how to analyze diary data, and in line with prior diary studies (Wang, Liu, Liao, Gong, Kammeyer-Mueller, & Shi, 2013), this study controlled for previous days ’ measures of fear (i.e., the mediator), and state work engagement and OCB…”

“on their behaviors every day, and measures aggregated from daily reports tend to have especially high reliability and validity because they avoid many retrospective memory biases (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“An observational study in which couples are asked to discuss financial issues or one based on time sampling or event sampling would give more insight into the quality of the discussion (Bolger et al., 2003).”

“Given their ability to record drinking behaviours in real time, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies [16,17] are particularly appropriate to capture the characteristics of real-life drinks.”

“The extracted Level-2 residuals of slopes were subsequently treated as between-person characteristics in all further analyses 69–71 .”

“RQ2: How does the use of GenAI tools impact people’s information-seeking behaviors for learning?”

“To capture their ongoing experiences, participants were asked to complete a daily diary each evening [12] and later participated in an interview informed by their diary entries.”

“As self-recorded, temporally distributed methods, they allow researchers to capture emotional experiences closer to their point of occurrence and promote introspection across time [10].”

“Therefore, the diary design with five waves in this study enables a more accurate reflection of the temporal dynamics (Bolger et al., 2003).”