diary study research questions

Skip navigation

• Log in to UX Certification

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Diary studies: understanding long-term user behavior and experiences.

March 29, 2024 2024-03-29

• Email article
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Twitter

In This Article:

Defining diary studies, when to conduct a diary study, how data is gathered, the diary-study timeline, data analysis.

A diary study is a qualitative user research method used to collect insights about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time and in context.

During a diary study, participants report their interactions and experiences as they occur over a period ranging from a few days, weeks, to a month or longer.

For example, in a diary study investigating how nurses interact with patient health records in a hospital setting, we may ask nurses to log all their activities involving health records.

Collecting contextual , self-reported insights from participants over time makes diary studies great for understanding how users behave within the context of their everyday lives.

Diary Studies vs. Field Studies and Contextual Inquiries

Like field studies and contextual inquiries, diary studies are a type of context method . All these methods are used to understand users’ contexts and environments. However, field studies and contextual inquiries involve directly observing users, usually in person, and can be costly.

In contrast, diary studies are done remotely and asynchronously, allowing researchers flexibility and access to distributed users. Diary studies can often be conducted at a lower cost than field studies or contextual inquiries.

Diary Studies vs. User Interviews and Usability Testing

Contextual and longitudinal insights cannot be collected through single-session moderated user-research methods, like usability testing or user interviews. These types of methods typically remove users from their personal context and take place over a short time.

Diary studies are useful for exploring a wide variety of research questions about long-term experiences and repetitive activities. You might decide to conduct a diary study when you have research questions about the following aspects of an experience.

The focus of a diary study can range from very broad to extremely targeted , depending on the topic being studied. Diary studies are often focused on one of the following:

• Broad behaviors
• Targeted product usage
• Targeted activities

Diary Studies with Broad Behavioral Focus

Researching general activities or behaviors helps researchers understand users’ mindsets, mental models, habits, and strategies.

Example: How do people use intelligent assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant?

Diary Studies Focused on Targeted Product Usage

Studying users’ interactions with a particular product over time gives insights into their motivations, usage patterns, and comprehensive experience using that product.

Example: How do people use a specific meal-delivery application in their everyday lives, and what is their overall experience and perception of using it?

Diary Studies Focused on a Targeted Activity

Targeted research around specific activities that take place over time helps researchers understand how users approach broad goals that often include multiple interactions.

Example: How do customers go about researching and purchasing a new mobile phone plan?

These types of diary studies may target activities involving one particular product or service or may focus on how users approach long-term activities in the larger marketplace.

Diary studies get their name from the way this type of research was traditionally conducted. Research participants were asked to keep a physical diary, documenting relevant behaviors and experiences during a defined period of time.

Today, we have access to a host of digital tools that can make running diary studies much more efficient for both participants and researchers. However, the underlying method is still the same. Participants are asked to log specific information about activities being studied.

Selecting the right tool(s) for data collection is a decision that should be made based on a variety of factors. We discuss tool selection in detail later in this article. However, one of the primary considerations in tool selection will be driven by your research questions and the focus of your study.

Due to the long-term nature of diary studies and the added complexity of directing participants on how to share insights, these studies require substantial planning and preparation.

After defining the goals of the study, you will need to consider a few important aspects (and document them in your study plan):

• When Participants Should Create Diary Entries
• Length of the diary study
• Number of participants and their profile
• Incentives and response requirements
• Communication templates and supporting materials
• Pilot study
• Pre-study brief
• Post-study interview

1.  When Participants Should Create Diary Entries

There are three common methods for gathering insights during diary studies: event-based, interval-based, and signal-based. Each study's unique research goals, questions, and focus will help researchers determine the best method for gathering information from participants. Many studies use a combination of these methods.

2. Length of Diary Study

Consider for how long you will need participants to report their interactions. The length of a diary study should depend on:

• Your research questions
• What behavior you’re trying to capture
• How frequently these behaviors might happen
• How long it takes typical users to complete a longitudinal activity

You may need to do some exploration to understand the typical frequency or length of activities, but ultimately, the reporting period you select should be one that will give you enough data points across your whole participant sample.

3. Number of Participants and Their Profile

Consider who and how many participants should be part of your study. Your participants’ typical behaviors should match what you’re looking for in the study.

For example, a study about food-delivery applications may need to involve participants who use such applications several times a week.

Because a diary study takes place over a longer time than a regular usability-testing study, there is a higher chance that participants will drop out of the study due to unexpected circumstances in their lives. Consider overrecruiting in preparation for potential dropouts so that you have enough data points in the end.

Also, consider how many participants will give you enough data to answer your research questions. You want enough participants to reach saturation — that is enough data to ensure your themes will be well established.

Saturation refers to a moment in qualitative research when your data becomes repetitive — you hear the same thing again and again. After this point, there is a diminishing return with any additional participants. In a diary-study context, saturation happens when additional data no longer changes your understanding of the behaviors you’re studying but instead reinforces the themes you’ve already identified.

The best sample size to reach saturation depends on how broad your research questions or the problem space are and on how varied or homogenous your target user group is. The more variety in your user group, the more participants you will need to recruit to get a representative mix of users. And, the broader the research questions, the more people you will need to recruit to ensure enough insight coverage across all questions.

Below we outline some rough guidelines for sample sizes based on these criteria.

4. Incentives and Response Requirements

Be clear and specific about what participants need to do in your diary study so that people understand what is expected of them and you get the data that you need.

It’s useful to designate a minimum number of responses you expect from participants in exchange for the study incentive. However, this minimum should be realistic to ensure natural behavior from participants.

Expect that your participants' number of responses may vary. In some situations, you might allow participants to report activities beyond the minimum and earn more for doing so. However, if you do so, you should also designate a maximum number of responses that participants can submit, to avoid having respondents manufacture fake interactions to earn more money.

Diary-study incentives should be higher than those for a typical user-testing session due to the long-term engagement required. Consider the length of the study and the effort required for participants to provide all the information you need, utilizing the tools you select.

As a broad guideline, we recommend about $40 per hour of the total time commitment you expect for a study with a general sample of US-based participants. However, this number should be adjusted accordingly for highly specialized audiences.

For studies longer than a week, think about how you might keep users engaged throughout the length of the study . You can break apart the total incentive and offer smaller installments as participants reach specific milestones (e.g., 3 days of logging), to keep them motivated throughout the duration of the study.

Think about the type of information you need from your participants.

• Is the information simple or complex?
• Do you need basic feedback about behaviors and interactions, or do you need screenshots, images, videos, or screencasts as well?
• Do you have specific questions that each participant should answer about each interaction they report?

These factors will influence the tools you choose.

• For simple text responses , you might choose to use a messaging application like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Telegram.
• For more complex data , consider tools like Google Forms, Google Docs, Survey Monkey, dScout, or Recollective.

Beyond the type of data you need, there are other considerations to factor into your the choice of a  tool.

Data Security

If your responses are likely to include personal identifying information or private data, select tools that guarantee data security.

Participant Convenience

Think about the tools that are most convenient for your participant sample. For example, teenagers may prefer to report activities through Snapchat rather than email.

Some tools are free,others can be quite expensive. Free tools are usually general-purpose and not tailored to diary studies, so they often involve a lot of work to onboard participants, write specific directions, communicate with participants, and process the data after the study.

Specialized diary-study tools like dScout are costly, but they alleviate a lot of the researchers’ overhead. They streamline the setup and facilitation of these studies and make them easy to run.

6. Communication Templates and Supporting Materials

You should plan to monitor your participants’ responses as they submit them . If you review data as it comes in, you can ask follow-up questions and prompt them for additional details while the activity is still fresh in their minds.

Let participants know up front that you will be reaching out throughout the study and agree on a means of contacting them so you can give encouragement or ask for clarification without being overly intrusive. Give periodic reminders each day or every few days. You’ll also want to track the qualifying submissions in relation to the reporting timeline.

Regardless of the tool you select, some preparation will be required.

It’s a good idea to create templates for various messages you will send to participants, as well as documentation and instructions in advance.

Documentation you should prepare includes:

• Study description
• Consent form
• Welcome message
• Informational packet: Directions for participation, requirements, incentive details, example logs, detailed instructions for using selected tools, schedule
• Any proactive logging prompts (Consider using a scheduling tool for automated delivery.)
• Status and check-in message templates to streamline periodic communications about the number of interactions provided and what is still required
• Post-study interview guide
• Thank you message and incentive delivery

Present the study and expectations in simple and straightforward terms, using consistent terminology throughout. Be as specific as possible about what information you need participants to log without stifling natural variability and differences that you cannot plan for.

Give users example log entries to help them understand the level of detail you need from them. But make sure you don’t bias participants toward those types of entries that you happened to provide as examples.

Communicating periodically with your participants ensures that they stay on track and that they provide you with the right data. Create template messages for the following types of participants:

• Engaged and submitting useful responses: recognize their efforts and ask them to keep up the good work.
• Less engaged or producing incomplete data: give encouragement or offer to answer any questions that may help to get them on track.
• Disengaged or submitting responses that do not fit the reporting requirements: reiterate what they need to do or possibly release these participants from the study if participation issues aren’t corrected.

Diary studies are quite complex, so writing and reviewing all supporting materials in advance will eliminate the risk of confusion and set participants up for success.

7. Run a Pilot Study

Diary studies are fairly expensive and resource-intensive, so it’s helpful to conduct a short  pilot study  first. Ask pilot participants for feedback about materials and the diary study experience and adjust accordingly.

The pilot study does not need to be as long as the real study and is not meant to garner data for analysis. Its purpose is to test your study design, tools, and related materials, and practice the process. It will allow you to tweak your instructions and approach to ensure you get the data you need.

8. Pre-Study Brief

In a diary study, a pre-study brief is a short meeting you conduct with participants in advance of the reporting period to get them ready for the study. You should communicate what they should report, the required number of reports, and incentives, and answer any questions they may have.

For very simple studies, a pre-study brief may not be necessary — your onboarding materials may be able to serve this purpose.

However, if your study has a complex setup or if it requires users to report complex information or to use unfamiliar tools, take the time upfront to get participants ready to log their responses.

Schedule a meeting with each participant to discuss the details of the study. Walk through the schedule or calendar for the reporting period, answer questions, and discuss expectations.

Discuss the tools they will be using and be sure each participant has familiarized themselves with the technology; answer any questions they may have before beginning.

9. Post-study Interview

After the study, you will evaluate all the information provided by each participant . Plan a follow-up interview with each participant to discuss their responses in detail. This is your last opportunity to get insights from your participants before the study ends.

Ask probing questions to uncover specific details needed to complete the story and clarify as needed. For example, if you’re studying how people use meal-delivery applications, you may ask a participant to clarify a vague response. For example,  “I see that you said you were unsatisfied with the experience using this app. Can you elaborate a little bit about why you were unsatisfied?”

You might also ask general reflection questions about the broader experience you are studying, such as “Overall, what did you like or dislike about using these meal-delivery applications over the last few weeks?”

Because diary studies are longitudinal, they generate a large amount of qualitative data. Re-visit your research questions before you dig into all the rich insights you’ve collected to find the answers.

Evaluate the behaviors you’ve captured throughout the study. How did they evolve and change over time? What influenced these behaviors? If the focus of your study was around a particular product or service relationship, look at the entire customer journey.

Related Courses

Remote user research.

Collect insights without leaving your desk

Omnichannel Journeys and Customer Experience

Create a usable and cohesive cross-channel experience by following guidelines to resolve common user pain points in a multi-channel landscape

Interaction

Related Topics

• Research Methods Research Methods

Learn More:

Please accept marketing cookies to view the embedded video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euc_KvEoV_k

5 Steps for Effective Diary Studies in Customer Journey Research

Always Pilot Test User Research Studies

Kim Salazar · 3 min

Level Up Your Focus Groups

Therese Fessenden · 5 min

Inductively Analyzing Qualitative Data

Tanner Kohler · 3 min

Related Articles:

Balancing Natural Behavior with Incentives and Accuracy in Diary Studies

Mayya Azarova · 6 min

Attitudinal vs. Behavioral Research in UX

Page Laubheimer · 5 min

Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research

Maria Rosala · 5 min

Competitive Usability Evaluations

Tim Neusesser · 6 min

Context Methods: Study Guide

Kate Moran and Mayya Azarova · 4 min

The Hawthorne Effect or Observer Bias in User Research

Mayya Azarova · 10 min

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• BMC Med Res Methodol

A qualitative approach to guide choices for designing a diary study

Karin a. m. janssens.

1 Interdisciplinary Center for Psychopathology and Emotion regulation, Department of psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

2 Sleep-Wake Center, Stichting Epilepsie Instellingen Nederland (SEIN), Zwolle, The Netherlands

Elisabeth H. Bos

3 Developmental Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

Judith G. M. Rosmalen

Marieke c. wichers, harriëtte riese, associated data.

Since this is a qualitative study, most of the data cannot be provided due to the protection of the privacy of the participants. Parts of the information obtained can be found in the manuscript. Data request for the quantitative part of the study can be obtained by contacting the corresponding author.

Electronic diaries are increasingly used in diverse disciplines to collect momentary data on experienced feelings, cognitions, behavior and social context in real life situations. Choices to be made for an effective and feasible design are however a challenge. Careful and detailed documentation of argumentation of choosing a particular design, as well as general guidelines on how to design such studies are largely lacking in scientific papers. This qualitative study provides a systematic overview of arguments for choosing a specific diary study design (e.g. time frame) in order to optimize future design decisions.

During the first data assessment round, 47 researchers experienced in diary research from twelve different countries participated. They gave a description of and arguments for choosing their diary design (i.e., study duration, measurement frequency, random or fixed assessment, momentary or retrospective assessment, allowed delay to respond to the beep). During the second round, 38 participants (81%) rated the importance of the different themes identified during the first assessment round for the different diary design topics.

The rationales for diary design choices reported during the first round were mostly strongly related to the research question. The rationales were categorized into four overarching themes: nature of the variables, reliability, feasibility, and statistics. During the second round, all overarching themes were considered important for all diary design topics.

Conclusions

We conclude that no golden standard for the optimal design of a diary study exists since the design depends heavily upon the research question of the study. The findings of the current study are helpful to explicate and guide the specific choices that have to be made when designing a diary study.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-018-0579-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Diary studies in which participants are asked to repeatedly fill out questions about experienced feelings, cognitions, behaviors and their social context are increasingly being performed [ 1 ]. This is probably due to technological developments that ease performance of diary studies, such as the wide availability of Smartphones. Further, awareness is growing that the use of repeated assessment of (psychological) symptoms makes it possible to acquire valuable insights about (psychological) dynamics that cannot be obtained with the use of single-administered questionnaires [ 2 ]. The terms commonly used in diary research are experience sampling methods (ESM) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The terms ESM and EMA each stand for a wide variety of ambulatory assessment methods ranging from paper diaries and repeated telephone interviews to electronic data recording technologies and physiological recordings with sensors [ 3 ]. ESM/EMA aims to measure symptoms, affect and behavior in close relation to experience and context [ 3 , 4 ].

When designing a diary study, several choices have to be made. First, the research question should be specified, since the research question has important consequences for the choices of a diary design. Second, a decision on the sampling design should be made, e.g. the duration of the diary study and the measurement frequency. Third, one has to decide on the number of items to include in the diary. Fourth, a decision has to be made on whether participants have to answer the questionnaires on predefined (i.e. fixed assessment) or at random time-points. Fifth, it should be decided whether the items are about the here-and-now (i.e. momentary assessment) or about a previous time period (i.e. retrospective assessment). Finally, one has to decide on the delay participants are allowed to respond to the prompt to fill out the questionnaire. This is the time allowed to complete the survey before it is counted as missing data.

So far, diary design issues have mostly been addressed in methodological papers and textbooks (e.g., [ 4 – 8 ]). Although these are very useful, they are typically based on extensive personal experience from researchers who work in a specific research field. A systematic overview of information on diary design from researchers from different research fields is lacking. Typically, specific details on argumentation of choosing a particular diary design are not described in scientific publications. In order to increase information on diary designs performed in different disciplines, Stone and Shiffman already plead for careful description of argumentations for choosing a particular diary design in scientific papers [ 8 ]. Nevertheless, recent research indicates that the rationale for these choices is often not reported [ 9 ]. To overcome this omission in the literature, the aim of the current study was to obtain insight into reasons behind diary design by performance of a qualitative study. As a first step, we wanted to identify key elements relevant to diary design shared by research fields. Therefore, experts on diary studies from different research fields were asked about the rationale behind their choices for particular diary design topics.

Study population

All members of the international Society of Ambulatory Assessment [ 10 ] were invited by e-mail to participate in the study. Additionally, we invited researchers experienced in diary research from our personal network. Finally, PubMed was searched using the search terms “diary studies” and “time-series analysis”, after which leading authors of relevant articles were approached. Since the optimal design for a diary study depends heavily upon the research question, we did not strive to reach consensus, as opposed to a typical Delphi study. However, we believed that a second assessment round was necessary to validate the themes that we identified during the first assessment round. Therefore, our study is a semi-Delphi study [ 11 ] in which answers reported by the researchers during a first assessment round were independently summarized and anonymously given back to all participating researchers for feedback during a second assessment round. The first and second assessment round consisted of online questionnaires. All data processing and feedback reports were done without disclosing the identity of the participating researchers.

The first assessment round ran between October 2015 and February 2016, the second assessment round ran between April 2016 and July 2016. During both assessment rounds participants were provided a link to a Google Docs questionnaire by e-mail. Participants could answer all questions online. During the first assessment round, only open text fields were used. During the second assessment round, questions were answered on either 10 point rating scales or entered in open text fields. The data processing of both assessment rounds is explained in more detail below.

First assessment round

In the first round of this study, participants were asked to answer questions about themselves and the amount of experience they had with performing diary studies. Next, they were specifically asked about a diary study they had designed or co-designed. They were requested to report on the type of participants, study duration, the measurement frequency, the use of random or fixed assessments, the choice for momentary or retrospective assessment, and the delay participants were allowed to respond. In the current research, retrospective assessment means that questions covered the period between two prompts. In contrast to regular research in which retrospective recall is often much longer, this period was up to 24 h in the diary studies reported about in our research. We distinguished retrospective assessment from momentary assessment. During momentary assessment, questions covered the few minutes before the participants were filling out the questionnaires. Participating researchers were asked to provide these characteristics of their diary design and thereafter for their rationale behind these choices. Finally, we asked whether they would use the same diary design when he/ she should redo the study.

Data processing of the first round

KJ performed the initial thematic analysis to group the reasons given for particular diary designs into different categories for each diary design topic. A second rater (HR) grouped all arguments into these categories, and added or skipped categories if needed. In case no consensus was reached about the grouping of the arguments, a third rater (EB) made the final decision. The categorized rationales were grouped in overarching themes during a consensus meeting in which all authors (i.e., KJ, EB, JR, MW and HR) participated. During this meeting additional questions on the overarching themes raise, namely questions about the number of items used in the diary, practical suggestions and observed hiatus in the literature. These questions were added to the second assessment round.

Second assessment round

The overarching themes containing the categorized rationales for diary designs were given back to the participants during the second assessment round, in the form of a textual description accompanied by bar graphs depicting the frequency of the reported rationales. These, slightly adapted, bar graphs can be found in the result section of this article. Researchers were asked to rate the importance of the identified themes for diary studies in general for all the diary design topics (i.e. study duration, sampling frequency, random or fixed design, momentary or retrospective assessment, and delay allowed to respond to the beep). This was done on a rating scale ranging from 1 (not important at all) to 10 (extremely important).

Data processing of the second round

For each diary design topic, the median importance rate and interquartile range (IQR) were computed for each theme. The open text fields were thematically analyzed in the same way as during the first assessment round, except that EB was the second rater, and HR the third rater for the questions about practical suggestions and reported hiatus in the literature.

Participants

Forty-seven researchers participated in our study and provided us with information of 47 different diary studies. Two researchers reported about the same diary study during the first round, and one researcher reported about two studies during the second round. Answers about characteristics of the same study given by multiple participating researchers were only counted once. The researchers worked at 27 different institutes from 12 different countries. Details about the participating researchers are given in Table  1 . Information about the studies they reported on are given in Table  2 .

Characteristics of participating researchers ( n  = 47)

Note: IQR  Interquartile range

Characteristics of studies reported about ( n  = 47)

a Assessed during the second round, based upon answers on 35 studies reported by 38 participating researchers

Study intensity

The median study duration of the studies reported on was 17 days (IQR 7, 30), the median sampling frequency was five times a day (IQR 3, 10) and the median number of items was 30 (IQR 19, 55). The longest study duration was 9 months with a sampling frequency of five times a day when the participant filled out 55 items. It should be noted that this latter study was a single-case study ( n  = 1) performed in a clinical setting. The highest sampling frequency was every 15 min for 1 day while the participants filled out seven items each time. The highest number of items participants had to fill out during a single assessment was 90 in a study with a sampling frequency of twice a day for a period of 30 days.

Rationales for choices on different diary design topics

Rationales provided for the design choices will be discussed for each diary design topic, accompanied by bar graphs: i.e. the study duration (Fig.  1 ), measurement frequency (Fig.  2 ), random or fixed assessment (Fig.  3 ), momentary or retrospective assessment (Fig.  4 ), and allowed delay to respond to the beep (Fig.  5 ). Please note that some researchers did not provide a rationale for certain topics and that most researchers gave more than one rationale per topic. Therefore, the number of reasons does not add up to 47. A reason for a decision that was given for all design topics, was that the decision was based on previous research or expert opinion. Thirteen researchers did so for the decision on their study duration. They provided the following literature references: [ 12 – 17 ]. Thirtheen researchrs based their decision for the measurement frequency on previous research or expert opinion. The following references were given: [ 2 , 3 , 5 , 12 , 13 , 16 , 18 , 19 ]. One researcher based the decision for momentary or retrospective assessment on previous literature. The following literature references were provided: [ 4 , 20 – 25 ]. Four researchers based the decision for random or fixed assessment on expert opinion or previous literature. They provided the following literature references: [ 2 , 24 – 27 ]. Finally, seven researchers based their decision for the allowed delay to respond to the beep on expert opinion or previous research. These literature references were provided: [ 12 , 14 , 17 ].

Overview of the reasons provided for the chosen study duration, grouped into themes: Ot = Other, St = Statistical reasons, Fe = Feasibility, Re = Reliability, Na = Nature of the variables

Overview of reasons reported for the chosen measurement frequency, grouped into themes: Ot = Other, St = Statistical reasons, Fe = Feasibility, Re = Reliability, Na = Nature of the variables

Overview of reasons provided for the choice of (semi)random and or fixed assessment, grouped into themes: Ot = Other, St = Statistical reasons, Fe = Feasibility, Re = Reliability, Na = Nature of the variables. F = fixed and (S)R = (semi-)random

Overview of reasons provided for the choice of momentary or retrospective assessment, grouped into themes: Ot = Other, St = Statistical reasons, Fe = Feasibility, Re = Reliability, Na = Nature of the variables. M = Momentary, R = Retrospective and C = Combination of retrospective and momentary assessment

Overview of reasons provided for the chosen allowed delay to respond to the beep, grouped into themes: Ot = Other, St = Statistical reasons, Fe = Feasibility, Re = Reliability, Na = Nature of the variables

Study duration

The median study duration was 17 days, with an IQR from 7 days till 30 days, and total range between 1 and 270 days. The most frequently reported reason for the choice of a study duration was to measure long enough to obtain reliable and representative data (23 times). Also statistical reasons, such as obtaining enough observations to perform specific statistical analyses, were often reported (15 times). Reducing participant burden was reported eight times for minimizing study duration. Six researchers wanted to make sure that their study duration captured both week and weekend days, or an entire menstrual cycle. For six researchers, the study duration was related to an event, such as 2 weeks before and 4 weeks after a studied intervention. Four researchers reported that their study had to include a longer period, since the variable of interest was a priori known to occur infrequently. Very practical reasons were reported as well, e.g. the limited battery life of the ambulatory sensor. The variety of reasons a researcher can have for a particular study duration is illustrated in the following response: “We have chosen a measurement period of two weeks for several reasons. First, we wanted to have enough measurements to conduct reliable analyses within persons (….) we wanted at least 60 completed observations per person. We first decided that 5 measurements per day would be appropriate, and based on this, the minimum measurement period consists of 12 days. Eventually, we thought that 2 weekends in the measurement period would enable us to check weekend effects in a more reliable way, and we therefore set the measurement period at 14 days. In addition, our choice was also based on what we expected to be the maximum length that participants would be willing and able to fill out 5 measurements per day (….), and which length would be ‘representative’ for a person (….).”

Measurement frequency

The median measurement frequency was 5 times a day with an IQR range between 3 and 10 times a day, and total range between 1 and 50 times a day. Most researchers based their choice for a particular measurement frequency on the dynamics of the variable of interests (reported 18 times). Researchers interested in variables known to follow a circadian rhythm, like for example hormones or mood states, chose for relatively frequent measurements (e.g. 10 times a day). Researchers interested in variables expected to occur infrequently (e.g. panic attacks) or in summary measures (e.g. number of cups of coffee) chose infrequent measurements (i.e. once a day). Keeping acceptable participant burden was the second most often reported reason for a certain measurement frequency (reported 16 times). By keeping participant burden low, researchers wanted to diminish interference with participants’ normal daily lives (reported five times), improve compliance (reported four times), improve response rate (reported twice), and keep drop out low (reported twice). Nine researchers based their measurement frequency on the assessment on different parts of the day. Eight reported feasibility, not further specified, for their choice of the measurement frequency.

Five researchers chose for frequent measurements in order to increase representativeness of the data, and four to diminish recall bias and in this way increase reliability. Four researchers mentioned that frequent measurements were necessary to perform meaningful statistical analyses, and three that equidistant measurements were needed to meet the statistical assumptions, e.g. for vector autoregressive analyses. The ultimate choice for a particular study duration was mostly a compromise between these different aspects. This was nicely illustrated by one of the participating researchers: “Because the study aimed to investigate a rapidly varying phenomenon, namely momentary affective state and reactivity, we wanted to optimize temporal resolution. We wanted as high measurement frequency ( i.e. temporal resolution) as possible without compromising compliance. A frequency of 10 times per day has been shown to be feasible in previous studies (Csikszentmihalyi et al . 1987. J Nerv Ment Dis; 175:526–536, Shiffman et al 2008. Annu Rev Clin Psychol; 4: 1–32).”

Random or fixed assessment

Although we asked whether researchers used fixed or random assessment, many researchers indicated that they used semi-random assessment instead. Semi-random assessment means that an assessment occurs at a random time point, however within a certain predefined time window, to ascertain that assessments are on average equally spread over a day. Twenty-four researchers used a fixed assessment, eleven used random assessment, ten a semi-random assessment, and one used a combination of fixed and random assessment design. Since we expect that random designs were in fact mostly semi-random in nature, arguments for using them will be discussed together.

(Semi-)Random assessment was mostly chosen to avoid reactivity and anticipation effects (reported 14 times) and to increase the representativeness of the data (reported seven times). For example, one researcher wrote: “ Random intervals presumably decrease the influence of the measurements on daily life activities of the participants, as the participants do not know the exact measurement time and cannot plan and change their activities based on that. This increases ecological validity. Semi-random intervals guarantee that measurement times are evenly distributed across the day (Shiffman et al 2008. Annu Rev Clin Psychol; 4: 1-32).” The main reason for a fixed design was that such a design made it possible to obtain time-series data with equidistant time points required for many statistical techniques, such as vector autoregressive analyses (14 times). Other reasons for choosing for fixed designs were related to feasibility, e.g. to decrease participant burden (seven times), increase protocol adherence (seven times), and increase response rate (four times).

Retrospective or momentary assessment

Most researchers ( n  = 21) used a combined momentary and retrospective assessment design, followed by 14 researchers that chose for only momentary assessments, and finally 12 researchers that chose for only retrospective assessment. A retrospective assessment design was often used in order to obtain a (reflective) summary measure (reported 12 times) and for assessing thoughts or events, since these are mostly count variables (reported six times). Momentary assessment was mostly used to assess current emotions or context (reported ten times) and to capture life as it is lived (reported four times). For example, one researcher wrote: “Emotions were measured momentary as these are fleeting experiences and heavily influenced by recall bias. Daily events were asked retrospective (windows of approximately 90 minutes) as this is needed to capture the most important events that happened and that may have been rewarding or stressful” . The most frequently reported reason to assess momentary was to diminish recall bias (reported 14 times). Reasons related to feasibility were reported for both assessment methods, e.g. retrospective assessment was considered to be less intrusive, and momentary assessment easier to respond to. With regard to statistics, two researchers used a combination of momentary and retrospective assessment to allow studying the temporal order of events: “In addition, we chose for this design (affect/cognition momentarily and events retrospectively) because when assessing the relationships between events and affect/cognition the ordering would always be clear: events happened before the affect/cognition measurements. If both would have been asked retrospectively, it would have been less clear whether the affective states/cognitions came first or the events.”

Allowed delay to respond to the beep

The median amount of delay allowed to respond when respondents were prompted to fill out a questionnaire was 30 min, with an IQR of 15 min to 60 min, and total range between 1.5 min and 24 h. The most commonly reported reason for the delay allowed to respond was to give the respondents enough time to respond (reported 14 times). Thirteen researchers only allowed short delays in order to increase the ecological validity of the data (e.g., better representations of the activities the participant is currently involved in) and ten did so to diminish recall bias. Five researchers wanted to obtain momentary feelings and therefore did not allow participants much time to respond (that is < 20 min). Six researchers only allowed short delays to retain the measurement frequency needed to perform their analyses. The delay allowed to respond was also related to the measurement frequency. A researcher that opted for a long delay wrote: “Because for time-series analysis it is important to have little missing values, we chose a relatively long delay. Because we only have three measurements a day and because many of our variables concern “the previous measurement interval”, we don’t see this as a big problem.” A researcher who chose a short delay wrote : “We chose to allow a relatively short length of delay to ensure the real-time assessment and to avoid recall bias. However, to increase compliance, some delay has to be allowed as the participants are living their normal lives and are not always able to reply immediately. 15 minutes delay has been used in previous studies (e.g. Jacobs et al 2011. Br J Clin Psychol; 50: 19-32). Results from previous paper&pencil –diary studies suggest that most of the participants answer within 10 to 20 minutes (Csikszentmihalyi et al 1987. J Nerv Ment Dis; 175:526-536) and that answers after a longer than 15 minutes delay are less reliable (Wichers et al 2007. Acta Psychiatr Scand; 115: 451-457).”

Using the study design again

Most researchers (i.e. n  = 27 [60%]) reported that on hindsight they were satisfied with their designs. Of the researchers who were not satisfied, most would like to intensify their diary design, by using more frequent measurements (five researchers), extending the diary period (four researchers), using a combination of intensive diary and longitudinal designs (i.e. burst designs, two researchers), or adding some items (one researcher). Three researchers opted for a less intensive design: that is a lower measurement frequency ( n  = 2) or fewer items in the diary ( n  = 1). Further, two researchers would have included more participants and one would have personalized the diary items.

Themes identified

After thematically analyzing the data of the first assessment round, four overarching themes were identified that covered the reasons mentioned for choices behind all diary design topics. The first theme was ‘the nature of the variables of interest’. This theme comprised reasons related to characteristics of the variable of interest, for example its fluctuation pattern or its occurrence rate. The second theme was ‘reliability’. Reliability referred to the reproducibility, representativeness, and/or consistency of the obtained assessments. The third theme was ‘feasibility’. This theme covered reasons related to practicability for both the participant and the researcher. The fourth theme was ‘statistics’. This theme contained reasons related to performance of statistical analyses. To get more insight into these categories, the reasons reported by the researchers are grouped per category in Figs. ​ Figs.1, 1 , ​ ,2, 2 , ​ ,3, 3 , ​ ,4, 4 , ​ ,5 5 .

Thirty-eight participants (81% of the participants in the first assessment round) participated in the second assessment round. They rated the importance of the different overarching themes identified during the first assessment round for the choices of each diary design topic.

Importance of different themes

The importance rates (scored on a scale from 0 = not important at all to 10 = extremely important) for the different overarching themes for each diary design topics are given in Table  3 . The role of statistics for the choice of the time allowed to respond was considered least import (i.e. median 6, IQR: 4–8). The role of the nature of the variable of interest for the choice of momentary or retrospective was considered most important (i.e. median 9. IQR: 9–10). The nature of the variable(s) of interest (e.g., its occurrence or fluctuation rate) was found to be most important for making a decision about the measurement frequency and the choice for momentary or retrospective assessment. The nature of the variable(s) of interest and the reliability (e.g. obtaining representative data) were found to be most important for the choice of the study duration. The reliability and statistics (e.g. obtaining equidistant data) were most important for the choice of (semi)random or fixed assessment. The nature of the variable, reliability and feasibility were all found equally important for the choice of the delay allowed to respond.

Importance rates of overarching themes for different diary design topics

Note: Assessed on a scale ranging from 1 (not important) to 10 (extremely important), more details are given in the method section

Medians (Interquartile range) are given

Practical suggestions

We will now discuss the practical suggestions to improve diary studies that were reported by more than one researcher. Suggestions that were reported by only one researcher are given in Additional file  1 . Suggestions were provided by 34 researchers, four researchers did not report suggestions.

To increase the reliability of the obtained data, the following suggestions were given. Five researchers suggested to use language for the items and answering scales that suits participants (e.g. to use easy wording and ask about the here-and-now). Four researchers suggested to use previous studies or pilots to help designing a diary study. Two researchers suggested making the study relevant for participants as well, for example by providing them personalized feedback reports based on their diary data. Two researchers reported to use reliable items or modified traditional questionnaires. Two researchers suggested verifying the sampling times of the self-reported data with objective information obtained at the same moment (i.e. general available weather information) and telling participants that you will do so.

To increase the feasibility for participants, it was suggested to use short questionnaires (six times), sample not too frequently (five times), use electronic diaries or smartphones (four times), use fixed sampling designs (four times), provide incentives (four times), personalize the (fixed) sampling scheme to the participants’ preference (four times), and to allow a long delay to respond (twice).

Many suggestions were about involving participants when preparing, conducting, and evaluating the study. It was suggested to offer participants close support during the diary study (eight times), to think together with participants about how to prevent missing data (four times), give good briefing and instructions to your participants (four times), and to perform a pilot study to check on feasibility (twice). Other suggestions were to use fixed or equidistant assessment designs (four times) and to ensure enough assessments (four times) to increase statistical possibilities.

Suggestions for future research

The nine suggestions for future research reported by more than one researcher were: theoretical guidance with regard to dynamics of phenomena of interest (ten times); theoretical guidance on what the advantages and disadvantages are of particular diary designs (eight times); information on how burdensome particular designs are (for particular target populations) (five times); information about power calculation (both number of participants and number of time-points) (four times); information on statistical strategies for diary data (thrice); information on optimal number of items (twice), information on how to obtain reliable data (twice): and information on whether the reliability of the data changes over time (twice). Gaps in the literature that were reported by only one researcher can be found in Additional file  2 . Finally, five researchers indicated that they did not know the answer or did not respond, and three researchers reported that we know already a lot (although one of them also reported that an extensive/complete overview of all pros and cons of certain designs is lacking).

From the results of this semi-Delphi study we can conclude that the nature of the variable(s) of interest, reliability, feasibility and statistics were important to keep in mind when making decisions on diary design topics. Small differences in importance scores were found. The nature of the variable(s) of interest (e.g., its occurrence or fluctuation rate) was found to be most important for making a decision about the measurement frequency and the choice for momentary or retrospective assessments. The nature of the variable(s) of interest, and the reliability (e.g. obtaining representative data) were found to be most important for the choice of the study duration. The reliability and statistics (e.g. obtaining equidistant data) were most important for the choice of (semi)random or fixed assessment. The nature of the variable, reliability and feasibility were all found equally important for the choice of the delay allowed to respond.

The strong points of this study are that the qualitative approach allowed insight into the reasoning of researchers when deciding on a particular study design. Moreover, researchers from eleven different countries from 27 institutes participated and reported about a wide variety of studies which increased the generalizability of our study. The open text field answers were independently scored by two reviewers, in order to diminish subjective choices while grouping the reported reasons.

A limitation of this study is that although we planned to perform a Delphi study, the diversity and the number of topics addressed did not allow in depth discussion of different viewpoints of participating researchers. For example, most researchers argued that increasing the measurement frequency would increase participant burden, while some reported that increasing the measurement frequency actually decreases participant burden, since it becomes more routine for participants to fill out the questionnaire. It would have been interesting to have the participating researchers discussing these different points of view, for example in focus groups. Moreover, the online survey might potentially have led to less extensive responses than could have been obtained by face-to-face interviews. Further, although we strived to include researchers from a variety of research fields by inviting researchers who were member of the Society of Ambulatory Assessment, we only partially managed to do so. By also contacting researchers from our personal network, an oversampling might have occurred of researchers using fixed and low frequency sampling schemes and of researchers performing studies on mood disorders. Also some participating researchers were relatively new in the field, and completed only one or two diary studies so far. This might have diminished the generalizability of our findings.

Findings in the current study are generally in line with recommendations in text books and other methodological articles in which diary design topics are addressed [ 1 , 4 – 6 , 28 ], and no unexpected findings came out. The emphasis on particular diary designs in prior publications was however somewhat different from the current study, as they were mostly in favour of (semi)random designs and momentary assessment. The current study found also many arguments in favour of using fixed designs and retrospective assessment. This is probably due to the larger weight that was given to statistical possibilities for data collected at equidistant time points and the nature of the variable of interest for choices of diary designs. In the current study, also topics that so far gained relatively little attention were addressed such as the number of items to include in a diary study and the time participants were allowed to respond to the prompt. Further, the current study is the first to identify and categorize reasons for diary design choices made by researchers from different research fields in specific diary studies. Therefore, it offers examples of translations of methodological knowledge to specific research settings. Upcoming researchers in the field might thereby obtain further insight into the various options and to consider these options carefully when planning a study. Researchers are made aware that these choices may have a large influence on the collected data and on the research questions that can be answered. We therefore believe that our study might serve as a helpful source of information for researchers designing diary-based research. It presents an overview of the different choices they can make, with arguments in favour of specific choices in specific circumstances. It also shows that design choices often are a trade-off between different themes, because taking the nature of the variables, reliability, feasibility, and statistical possibilities into account when choosing a specific design topic may lead to conflicting optimal designs. For example, a long study duration may improve reliability, but decrease feasibility. Most importantly, we hope to increase the awareness that a gold standard for the optimal design of a diary study is not possible, since the design depends heavily on the research question.

To make the results more applicable for future researchers, we developed a checklist for designing a diary study based on our results. This checklist is intended to make researchers think carefully about their research design before conducting a diary study, and contains practical considerations, such as sending out reminder text messages. The checklist is given in Additional file  3 and is successfully used at our department. Results of our study can also be used to adapt the recently published checklist for reporting EMA studies that was based on the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist [ 9 ]. For example, information on reasons behind design selection decisions, information on whether items were assessed momentary or retrospectively, and information on the delay the respondents were allowed to respond might be useful additions to this checklist, since this information might help other researchers when designing their own study. Further, information on whether items were assessed momentarily or retrospectively is essential for interpreting the results. Information on the dynamics of the variables of interests and the participant burden of different sampling schemes is also essential for making sophisticated decisions. These topics have up-till-now only been scarcely examined (e.g., [ 2 , 27 , 29 ]). We believe that a careful description of diary designs in the method section of future studies or on study pre-registration platforms might increase insight into these topics.

The current study identified different topics that are helpful to keep in mind when designing a diary study, namely the nature of the variables, reliability, feasibility and statistics. All these topics were found to be important for choices on the study duration, the measurement frequency, random or fixed assessment, momentary or retrospective assessment, and time allowed to respond to the beep. No preferred designs have been provided, since the exact choices for the study design depend heavily upon the research questions. We believe this study will help guiding the choices that have to be made for optimal diary designs.

Additional files

Additional practical suggestions as reported by participating researchers. (DOCX 16 kb)

Additional gaps in the literature as reported by participating researchers. (DOCX 15 kb)

Example of a checklist for handing in a diary study used within our (i.e. the authors) psychiatry department at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands. (DOCX 18 kb)

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Society for Ambulatory Assessment for providing their mailing list, and we would like to thank all participating researchers for their valuable input to this study. We would also like to thank Inge ten Vaarwerk and Erwin Veermans for their critical feedback on the Checklist for diary studies within RoQua [ 30 ].

The authors received no specific funding for this work. We acknowledge the financial contribution of the iLab of the department of Psychiatry of the UMCG [ 31 ] to the appointment of dr. K.A.M. Janssens.

Availability of data and materials

Abbreviations, authors’ contributions.

KAMJ designed the study, wrote the initial and final draft of the study and performed the qualitative and quantitative analyses. EHB designed the study, contributed to the qualitative analyses, and reviewed and approved the final manuscript. JGMR designed the study, and reviewed and approved the final manuscript. MCW designed the study, and reviewed and approved the final manuscript. HR designed the study, contributed to the qualitative analyses, and reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Our study does not fall under the scope of the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO) and thus no approval of the ethics committee and no informed consent had to be obtained according to our national regulation, see also guidelines of the Central Committee on research involving human subjects ( www.ccmo.nl ).

Consent for publication

Our study does not fall under the scope of the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO) and thus no informed consent had to be obtained according to our national regulation, see also guidelines of the Central Committee on research involving human subjects ( www.ccmo.nl ). However, participants (all scientific researchers) were informed on forehand that their information would anonymously be used for scientific publication.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Karin A. M. Janssens, Email: [email protected] .

Elisabeth H. Bos, Email: [email protected] .

Judith G. M. Rosmalen, Email: [email protected] .

Marieke C. Wichers, Email: [email protected] .

Harriëtte Riese, Email: [email protected] .

Integrations

What's new?

Prototype Testing

Live Website Testing

Feedback Surveys

Interview Studies

Card Sorting

Tree Testing

In-Product Prompts

Participant Management

Automated Reports

Templates Gallery

Choose from our library of pre-built mazes to copy, customize, and share with your own users

Browse all templates

Financial Services

Tech & Software

Product Designers

Product Managers

User Researchers

By use case

Concept & Idea Validation

Wireframe & Usability Test

Content & Copy Testing

Feedback & Satisfaction

Content Hub

Educational resources for product, research and design teams

Explore all resources

Question Bank

Research Maturity Model

Guides & Reports

Help Center

Future of User Research Report

The Optimal Path Podcast

Maze Guides | Resources Hub

What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

0% complete

Diary research: Understanding UX in context

Diary research is a research method which provides a deep level of intimate insight into your target user and focus area. Read on to learn how to plan, prepare, and conduct diary studies.

What is diary research?

Diary research—also known as a diary study—is a longitudinal (running over a period of time) UX research method used to collect qualitative data , through participants keeping a diary to record their thoughts, feelings, and behavior, while they use a product.

A diary study entails participants self-reporting data over an extended period of time—ranging from days to a month or longer. During this time, they’ll log specific information about activities regarding the product being studied.

Diary studies allow us to better understand the complexity of the user experience, which changes so drastically based on the use cases experienced by users, and the evolution of the product in their hands.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher @ Maze

The purpose of diary studies

The main value of diary studies are their unique ability to give contextual insights about real-time user behavior and needs . Unlike other research methods—such as usability tests or user interviews, which provide observational data gathered in a lab-based situation, removed from a product’s everyday application—diary studies offer a window into the reality of users interacting with products .

Product teams can then use these organic insights to define UX features and requirements, creating a truly user-centered experience, without the guesswork.

Methods for conducting diary research

There are several methods of diary study, ranging from open diary studies which give participants freedom to use the diary as they wish, and closed diary studies which follow a tighter set of protocols. Depending on your research objectives, you’ll want to choose between the two:

• Freeform/open diary study: Similar to a personal journal, this type of study gives participants a lot of freedom in how and when they record their thoughts. You’ll still want to give subjects some initial guidance, but the diary is more free-form. This style enables less-experienced participants to take part, and people are likely to provide information you may not think to ask for, making it ideal for generative research. However, the downside is participants may not include the details you need, or include too little—or too much—information.
• Structured/closed diary study: A closed diary study uses pre-set focuses and closed-ended questions to uncover information. Structured diaries may include a page per study day, concluding questions, and explicit instructions. They are typically easier to analyze as the data will be pre-formatted across all participants. They also ensure you receive the information that’s most relevant to your study, so it’s perfect for evaluative research. The downside of this study type is that you may miss out on additional insights that don’t fit into the structure provided.

Most researchers find that the ideal method sits somewhere between freeform and structured, providing participants with a decent amount of guidance and reminders throughout the study, without overcrowding them.

The different types of diary studies

Along with deciding between an open or closed diary study, you also need to determine the type of diary you’ll be using.

There are an increasing number of ways to record diary entries, all of which broadly fall under the bracket of digital or paper. Unlike other research methods, the research tool you use for a diary study does not significantly impact the results, so the decision mostly comes down to the resources you have available (whether you can pay for an online tool or physical diaries) or personal preferences.

Paper diaries are a good, simple format for respondents, but there are big advantages to digital diary studies. You can ask follow-up questions, and have the ability to make sure respondents answer in the way you want them to. It’s also a big plus to be able to collect results little-by-little, and progress at the same pace as the analysis of results (even if sometimes it’s too early to draw conclusions.

Digital/online

• Digital tool e.g. dscout
• Online platform e.g. GoogleDocs
• Mobile app e.g. Indeemo
• Digital communication platform e.g. Whatsapp

Paper/offline

• A physical diary (provided by researcher or participant)
• Question sheet
• Video/audio log

Tip: The only main differentiator, other than cost, is that some digital research tools may analyze the results for you.

The benefits of diary research

There’s many reasons to opt for diary studies as your choice of research method , from a focus on micro-moments to providing real-life context to data. Let’s cover the perks of diary research.

Provides data with real-world context

One of the stand-out points of diary studies are how they convey a product’s impact within real-world context.

Diary research requires study participants to actually interact with a product in their everyday life, and record data in-situ (or shortly after). Where the majority of research methods ask participants questions outside a real-life scenario, diary studies do the opposite.

As a result, you’ll receive far more reliable, honest, and contextualized data. For example, say you’re making a travel maps app, during a usability test, users may find few issues with the app. However, in the real world, users may discover that the app doesn’t work offline and makes navigation difficult. They may realize that some of the features they use most when actually navigating, are ones they barely considered when sat in a research room.

Gaining this data is incredibly valuable, and provides key feedback points and priority for product teams, where previously they may have missed it.

Allows for a deep level of insight and micro-moments

Where some research methods reveal broad strokes of insight, diary studies scope in on the detail that builds the bigger picture.

If you want to focus on the micro-moments of user experience, diary research offers designers an incredibly detailed understanding of the users and product in question.

The purpose of a diary study is to understand long-term behaviors such as habits, changes in behavior or perception (especially if your product is evolving), motivations, customer journeys, etc.

One example is if you’re researching what makes users purchase a new product—asking them the question outright will likely provide a different answer than observing their thoughts and frustrations over the course of a week or longer. A longitudinal study like this will surface those micro-moments that build up, pushing someone towards a major choice.

By giving participants the opportunity to record thoughts, feelings and behaviors in the moment they happen, you also gain a deeper understanding of how your product works and impacts the user. This sort of nuance typically fades from our mind over time—where other UX research methods are a snapshot of user experience, diary research is like an HD video.

Captures how behaviors change over time

Temporal dynamics refers to how perceptions and behaviors change over time, and how they interact with and impact each other. For the sake of a product’s longevity, diary studies’ ability to reveal temporal dynamics is incredibly useful.

Diary research is one of the few research methodologies that provides respondents with autonomy, as well as a way to track their progress over time. This inherently means data is less likely to be biased in terms of the evolution of the results.

For a majority of UX research methods, users respond in the moment. Decisions are made on the spot, and thoughts are recorded during the test or afterwards. The perks of this is that you get gut reactions without users overthinking. However, it means your insight only goes so many levels deep.

Diary research, on the other hand, gives participants the opportunity to check in multiple times, record how their thoughts and feelings change over time, and reflect on their answers. It encourages self-discovery, providing you with a different lens of insight to consider.

Diary research’s longitudinal approach means you can understand how different events, emotions, and moments impact decisions and interactions with a product at the start of their relationship right through to consistent usage.

This view can unlock unique insights such as:

User habits and usage scenarios:

• What does a typical day look like for users; when do they engage with the product?
• What behaviors are spontaneous vs. pre-planned?
• What behaviors are sporadic, or habitual?
• When, why, and how does life interrupt usage of the product?
• What do users do before/after using the product?
• What are their workflows for completing these tasks?

Changes in behavior and perception:

• How learnable is a product?
• Do users share the product or results of using the product with others?
• Does using the product become part of their routine?
• What are users’ primary motivations for using the product—does this change?
• What are their main tasks with the product—does this change?

Attitudes and motivations:

• How do users feel before and after engaging with the product?
• How do they feel when they complete a task?
• Why do they make certain decisions?
• How do feelings and perceptions about the product change over time?
• What points of delight or friction are there?

Gathering answers to these questions enables you to develop a richer understanding of your users, and product, while also providing questions, scenarios, and research goals for future tests.

Minimize bias and the impact of observation

Even in the most carefully planned, unbiased research studies, participants are somewhat influenced by the presence of observation. Regardless of whether a study is moderated or not, participants know they are being observed—as a result, data will always be somewhat biased, however much we mitigate that.

Consider a field study; even though participants are in their natural habitat and you’re able to observe their day-to-day life, the participant will still act differently to how they do when truly alone.

Diary studies allow researchers to simulate a more personal relationship between user and study than other research methods. If the purpose of research is to truly uncover how participants interact with a product, then diary research captures this at its most natural.

The other plus side of a lack-of-observer is that—if prepared in advance—diary studies can self-run, removing some of the resources needed. Of course they still need to be monitored intermittently, but depending on how much you plan to communicate with participants, they can be fairly self-sufficient.

When should you conduct diary research?

There’s many circumstances where you may want to use diary research. Depending on your focus, the time you’ll want to conduct your study may vary.

Diary study objectives

The focus of a diary study can range from extremely specific (e.g. understanding all interactions with a specific section of a web page) to very broad (e.g. gathering general information about when people use a smartphone).

The Nielsen Norman Group suggests there are broadly four categories of diary study topics: 1. Product or website: Understanding all interactions with a product or site (e.g. a retail site) over the course of a month 2. Behavior: Gathering general information about user behavior (e.g. smartphone usage) 3. General activity: Understanding how people complete general activities (e.g. sharing information via social tools or shopping online) 4. A specific activity: Understanding how people complete specific activities (e.g. buying a new car)

The best time to conduct diary research

Diary studies can be conducted at any stage in the design process, but are typically most useful at the beginning, middle, and end:

When you’re in the discovery phase , diary research can reveal how users currently solve the problem in question, giving you valuable context to plan your own solution. Discovery-phase diary research can also be conducted on existing products or competitors, to set benchmarks or better understand the way users interact with similar products.

Testing early-stage prototypes can be done with diary research to gather information on the current success of your design, and identify any issues to address in future iterations.

At the end of development , a diary study can delve into user experience in the closest simulation to real life. This is a chance to see whether users are interacting with your product as expected, and uncover any missed opportunities for improvement.

After launch , diary research is helpful as a form of post-study interview to assess the success of a product and analyze performance in the real world; is it meeting expectations, what changes should be implemented in updates?

Diary research doesn’t necessarily take more time than other quantitative research methods. While there’s passive time of the study to take into account, it’s the analysis that is time-consuming. You’re analyzing evolutions of behavior and in-depth patterns, each focused on a different respondent’s perspective. The insight is well worth the time, but it helps to do this analysis in bits and pieces as you progress through the study.

Things to consider before conducting your diary study

Like most research methods, planning a diary study involves a lot of preparation. The added element of diary research being fairly hands-off, and taking place over a significant course of time, means it’s even more important to ensure you’ve not missed anything.

To help, here’s some things to consider before your study gets underway:

What type of diary are you using?

Determine what type of study you want to conduct, and the kind of diary your participants will be using.

• Open or closed: As we saw earlier in the chapter, open diaries are ideal for generative research, and closed for evaluative research. Take a look at the section above for a full rundown on the pros and cons of each, and remember to consider your research goals while deciding.
• Online or offline: Decide on the type of diary you want filled in. Consider your users—are they tech-savvy and would gel with electronic diaries? What activities are they logging—if you’re researching the durability of camping equipment, an offline diary users can travel with may work best. However, if you’re studying cosmetic preferences, then maybe a video log where participants can record their usage would make sense.

What equipment do you need?

If you’re asking participants to use a certain product, have they received a physical item, product, or prototype? Do they need instructions for it? If you’re testing a website or app, do participants have access to the platform and a copy of instructions for logging in?

What kind of logging are you doing?

Before you can begin your study, it’s crucial to think about how you’ll ensure diary entries are logged. There are several approaches to logging:

• In-situ logging (also called event-contingent protocol): Participants log when a relevant event occurs

When to use: Since this method asks participants to log information as it happens, it’s best for research where you don’t expect high volumes of entries, as this could disrupt the participant’s usual activities, and would be difficult to analyze later. For example, if you’re researching fashion retail websites, one of the events you’d ask participants to log may be each time they think about or browse clothing websites.

• Interval-contingent protocol: Participants are given predetermined intervals to report into, e.g. asking for entries to be logged every three hours

When to use: This technique is effective if the research you’re conducting isn’t situation-dependent, if you want a broader picture of daily life, or if you’re unsure when the event may occur. E.g. If you're researching the use of infant toys, interval-contingent protocol may be useful, as it’s hard to predict the play patterns of young children.

• Signal-contingent protocol: Participants receive notification to log. These may be manually sent or set up to automatically notify participants at regular or pre-planned intervals.

When to use: This method ensures you’ll receive an adequate amount of entries (typically one per day, or more if you’re doing in-situ logging), and reduces the possibility of participants forgetting to log entries, however it requires a notification tool and participants with some flexibility (unless you tailor notifications to their schedule).

• Snippet technique: Participants report events in-the-moment in a quick way (e.g. a couple of words on a post-it or phone note), then use time set-aside later to expand on the snippet. This technique is less intrusive than others, while still ensuring immediate responses are captured.

When to use: Snippets are particularly effective if your participants have busy schedules, or the events you’re researching are likely to occur randomly or in different locations.

Preparing participants for a diary study

Selecting participants for any UX research is a daunting task, but this step is particularly tentative for diary research—not only do you need participants who can answer your questions, but you need users who are understanding of (and willing to adhere to) the demands of a longer-term study.

Why your research participants matter

Just as the materials you build with matter, the participants you research with matter. These are the people who represent your target user group, they’re the people who will be using your product first-hand, so their opinion matters .

Participants will inform so much of your product; from the shape of an icon or the color of a button, to the most core functionality, research participants’ feedback will influence any and all decisions. That means, it’s imperative that they fit the bill.

When recruiting participants, don't hesitate to mention the reasons for this choice of method; this is also an opportunity to explain what they gain from being involved with this method.

How to select diary study participants

Selecting participants for a diary study doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s our formula for the perfect participants.

Participant profile + screening criteria x recruitment tool = great candidates

First, you want to build your participant profile (what your dream participant looks like) and consider any screening criteria (boxes they must tick). This will be heavily influenced by your target audience and research objectives—for instance, if you’re researching products for newborns, you want to ensure participants are new parents. Categories to consider include:

• Basic demographics (age, gender, marital status, nationality)
• Lifestyle (employment, hobbies, finances)
• Habits (schedule, interaction with products, type of customer)

Once you’ve narrowed down your ideal participant, use a recruitment tool with a built in screening survey for the most efficiency when gathering participants, and filter down to the best candidates. Bear in mind that few testers of more accurate profiles are better.

In terms of numbers, your study may require as few as three, or as many as 30 participants—this number will shift depending on the scope and budget of your research. For a typical diary study, we suggest aiming to recruit 10-15 participants, with a couple of back-ups.

One tactic for recruiting participants is to incentivize them, to ensure follow-through with the entire study. You can also consider working with existing customers; this is particularly valuable if you're researching changes or new features for an existing product.

Take a look at our article on recruiting research participants for more advice.

Reach the ideal diary study participants

Reach by Maze allows you to send targeted campaigns to candidate segments based on past research and engagement, so you never have to spend unnecessary time searching for the perfect participants again

How to conduct a diary study

While diary studies can be left somewhat unattended, if you want them to be a success and gather useful data, you need to prepare them well, to ensure everything ticks over without a hitch. In this section, we’ll get into five steps for planning and conducting your diary research.

I always follow ‘KISS’: keep it simple and smart. Your study needs to be quick and easy for users to complete, with clear and detailed instructions, to ensure they complete it regularly and accurately.

1. Plan your study

First up, it’s time to get organized and sketch out the parameters for your research.

Determine your objectives Start by reviewing your main objectives—are you researching an existing product, or a new one? Do you want to understand specific interactions, or broad behavioral information?

You can research multiple topics at once, but it will lead to more data to analyze, so ensure you link back any study objectives to broader research goals, to avoid being inundated with unnecessary information.

Select your diary type By this stage, you should already have considered what type of diary (online/offline etc.) you’re using. But before you can prep your research or participants, you also need to determine the style of diary and entries. Choose from a freeform or structured diary, or even a combination, depending on your objectives.

Write your research questions Now it’s time to collate the questions you’re hoping to answer, and put together any specific questions you’re asking participants—either as part of a structured diary, in general briefing documents, or follow-up surveys.

Some potential questions to consider are:

• Describe your day
• What were you doing before [event]?
• What was the hardest thing about achieving [task]?
• How did you feel before using [product]?
• What could have made [task] easier?
• How did you find using [product] today compared to last week?

Get 350+ examples of research questions in our research question bank 💡

Set your start and end dates Some studies may only need a few days, while others can continue for weeks, or even months. The study length depends on your research goals, product and topic—will the data you gather in a short period of time likely be the same as that collected over several weeks or months? If not, it may be worth continuing the study for longer to ensure you capture any temporal dynamics and a consistent, median data set.

Work with participants to plan the best time for the study to take place—for example, if you need their full attention, is there a period with more free time? Or if you want to see how they interact with your product in everyday life, what period is their routine most stable?

2. Prepare participants

Next, it’s time to introduce your participants and prepare them for the study. Bear in mind that for maximum efficiency and quality of results, you won’t want to communicate with participants once the study is underway (unless you’re providing manual notifications).

Education is key: take the time to explain the format to your respondents. Try to be transparent about the pace and format of answers; this will improve engagement and response rates over time from users.

Now’s the time to make sure participants are fully briefed and understand the assignment.

• Create a ‘cheat sheet’ to guide participants (include key info about the study and how-tos, emergency contacts etc.)
• Provide any props needed
• Plan any rewards or incentives
• Walkthrough entry logging method
• Share any pre-study surveys

3. Progress with the research

Now onto the bit you’ve been waiting for—it’s time to start researching!

Unlike with other research methods, this is the time where you’re the most hands off. This means now’s the perfect time to plan your follow-up and data analysis, or work on other research simultaneously.

While your study is running, you may want to communicate more or less with participants, depending on your diary and logging type. Keep any reminders or notifications consistent, and remember to be human. Recognize the input of engaged participants, and check in on those who appear to be struggling. Participants are opening up a vulnerable part of themselves with the study, so respect their boundaries and provide guidance where needed.

If you’ve arranged for entries to be sent to you as they’re logged then you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of data coming in. Organization is everything, so take notes and process as you go—it will save a lot of time in the long run. For video or audio logs, either use a diary study tool that transcribes, or send entries for transcription.

Note: If you're already using Maze for your UX research , here's how it can help with diary studies, too.

4. Post-study follow-up

After your study comes to an end, it’s worth meeting with each participant as a chance to discuss entries in detail. If this isn’t possible, an asynchronous interview or survey works well, too.

Once you’ve read all the entries, you can use this time to conduct a post-study interview and ask participants to expand on information where needed, and ask any follow-up questions you remembered part way through or off the back of entries.

Tip: After the study is also the time to ask for feedback from participants—what went well, what could be improved next time, what did they learn? Use this information to improve future research.

5. Process the data and analyze

If you’ve been using a diary research tool, your data may already be sorted. However, if you’re using other methods of diary submission, the work starts now. Once your diaries are transcribed, it’s time to sift through the data and begin to identify patterns, synthesize hypotheses, and track trends.

To make the task a little easier, we recommend breaking it into two stages:

• Identify your top participants: Who stands out, with either a particularly robust set of data, or significant patterns? It’s much easier to find evidence for an existing pattern, so use these individuals for leading takeaways and other entries to support your theory.
• Tag your data correctly: While tagging data isn’t always necessary, it proves valuable for diary research. Go through responses and assign descriptive tags (e.g. activity types, like ‘housework’, ‘fitness’, ‘relaxation’). Next, work with teammates to create thematic tags (e.g. ‘fun’, ‘interesting’, ‘boring’). Finally, consider which tags commonly overlap to start identifying patterns.

With the right analysis, your raw data can turn into valuable insights which are ready to inform your design.

Alternatives to diary research

Of course, diary studies won’t always be the perfect fit for your research project. It has its downfalls—self-reported data may be unreliable, and keeping a diary requires significant dedication from participants. So, if you’re looking for immediate results, have a very limited budget, or are focused on a simple usability question, then diary research probably isn’t for you.

Some alternatives to diary research include:

• Surveys and questionnaires
• User analytics
• Focus groups

Diary studies can also be combined with other methods as a way to gather more data or expand the reach of your research while keeping to a budget. What’s more, opting for a second, quantitative data research method can provide more well-rounded results in combination with diary research.

Learn more about other UX research methods

Here's our ultimate guide to UX research 🔍

Frequently asked questions about diary research

How do you write a diary study?

To write a diary study, you first need to determine the type of diary you plan to use. For an open/freeform diary, participants have freedom to write what they want when they want. For a closed/structured diary, you may want to write a set of clear instructions, provide questions for each day of the study, and write follow-up questions.

How long should a diary study last?

The length of a diary study depends on your objectives and research area. Diary studies can last anything from a few days to a few months.

When should you do a diary study?

You should consider running a diary study if you want to:

• Gather data with real-world context
• Understand micro-moments that build a big picture
• Capture temporal dynamics and how behaviors change over time
• Give participants time to think deeply about answers
• Minimize the impact of observation

Five-Second Testing: Step-by-Step Process + Example

Research Bookmark

Diary Studies: A Step-by-Step Guide For Beginners

User research resources for beginners.

Connecting with users on a profound level is crucial for crafting exceptional user experiences. Did you know that 78% of users value personalized experiences? Diary studies offer a window into users' lives, providing invaluable insights that drive empathetic and tailored design solutions.

What Are Diary Studies?

Diary studies are intimate narratives, much like personal diaries, where users document their interactions and experiences with a product or service over a specified period. These studies offer an in-depth understanding of user behavior, preferences, and motivations.

How To Conduct Diary Studies:

Define Research Objectives: Start by clearly defining the goals and objectives of your study. Articulate what you aim to discover or understand through the diary study.

Participant Recruitment: Select participants who represent your target user group. Ensure diversity to capture a wide range of perspectives and behaviors.

Instructions and Guidelines: Provide comprehensive instructions to participants on what to document, how often, and the preferred format for entries. Offer guidance to maintain consistency and quality throughout the study.

For a detailed understanding of diary studies, watch " Diary Studies Explained " by NNgroup

Watch full clip

Executing the Diary Study:

Tools and Technology: Choose suitable platforms or tools for diary entries that align with participants' preferences. It could be a digital app, online platform, or traditional pen and paper.

Data Collection: Encourage participants to record experiences, emotions, challenges, and noteworthy details authentically and comprehensively.

Regular Check-Ins: Schedule periodic check-ins or interviews to clarify entries, delve deeper into specific experiences, and build rapport with participants.

Here are some recommended tools for conducting dairy studies:

SurveyMonkey

Optimal Workshop

UserTesting

Explore more tools here

Analyzing and Utilizing Data

Data Analysis: Analyze collected data systematically to identify patterns, insights, and pain points. Synthesize findings into actionable recommendations for design enhancements.

To refine diary study analysis techniques, read "How to Conduct a Diary Study: A Start-to-Finish Guide" by dscout.

Read Article

Just to Refresh Our Memories….

Establish clear research objectives and participant criteria.

Provide detailed instructions and maintain participant engagement.

Choose appropriate tools and platforms for data collection.

Analyze collected data meticulously to extract actionable insights.

Featured Jobs: Explore some open UX Positions:

Entry level Graphic and UI/UX Designer

Team Remotely Inc, Tampa, FL (Remote), $57K/yr - $67K/yr

User Experience Researcher

HCLTech, Atlanta Metropolitan Area (Remote)

UI/UX Designer

Vibrant Emotional Health, United States (Remote), $104K/yr - $120K/yr

User Experience Designer

Top Hatch, United Kingdom (Remote), $40/hr - $50/hr

Associate User Researcher

Co-op, Manchester, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)

User Experience Researcher (Architect)

LTIMindtree, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Hybrid)

Upcoming Workshop!!!

If you've found the process of creating user archetypes challenging or are simply curious about how the are created, our upcoming workshop on December 13th, 'How to Create User Archetypes in UX,' is the perfect opportunity. This hands-on session will teach you a step-by-step methodology for creating user archetypes from your research findings.

Few spots left! save yours

Best Regards,

The RB Team

Ready for more?

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music and Media
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business Ethics
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic History
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

2 Diary Data Collection as a Qualitative Research Method

• Published: January 2018
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter discusses the use of the diary in qualitative research, the role of the researcher and the diarist, the format of the entries, the epistemological orientations underlying diary designs, and various types of diary studies. The diary has always been among the options in the qualitative methodological repertoire and actually predates other more common contemporary methods for data collection. Diary studies involve the standard tasks of any research project: reviewing the literature and identifying research questions; designing and carrying out a data collection protocol; and analyzing and discussing the data. The style of analysis depends upon the type of study conducted. This chapter will discuss the use of diaries in several types Descriptive, Constructionist, and Applied Research designs.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• Google Scholar Indexing
• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Since this is a remote method of testing , users are prompted several times to help them remember to fill in their diary.

Diary studies are defined by two factors: the context and the time spent in gathering data. These factors are what make this methodology different from the rest of the user-research methods that we know.

This method is also known as the "poor man's field study" as they are unlikely to provide information that is detailed and complete compared to field studies. However, diary studies have some advantages that are important in specific cases.

What are the advantages of running diary studies when conducting user research?

There are several benefits to using diary studies when it comes to understanding user experience behavior. This research method often surfaces topics that the UX team does not know exist.

Like for example, in a more controlled type of research, participants may not provide information or phenomenon in an interview or survey, simply because these data do not come to mind at that particular moment or time.

Since diary studies are longitudinal, they are likely to get different information from participants that did not surface in other study methods. 

Another advantage of conducting diary studies is its ability to collect data in its natural form. Since it is minimally intrusive, participants can provide more accurate diary entries on their behavior.

Diary studies are efficient as you can conduct the experiment to 20, 30, or even more participants at the same time. On top of this, it does not need a team to commit to a very intensive kind of research.  

This type of user behavior study is beneficial in terms of getting to know the market first before conducting more extensive and in-depth research. 

Diary studies prepare the UX team to get prepared and to know their respondents first before heading out for a face-to-face observation, which can help them gain helpful insights and come up with more meaningful observations.

When to conduct diary studies

While going out to participant locations and observing them first hand is typically my first choice when striving to study and understand behaviors, there are several reasons why diary studies can sometimes be a more appropriate choice. For instance:

We already discussed the importance of diary studies, specifically why this method is more appropriate than the other user research methods that use direct observation.

In addition, diary studies are essential in the following instances:

When you want to know about the moments and actions that affect the decision-making process.

If you are curious about how people make a decision or take an action on something as big as moving to a new home or buying a car, then diary studies can show you how these daily moments lead to a major decision or action.

If you are curious about the different experiences, behaviors, and perceptions of users and how these factors change over time.

Observing the same participants over a period of time lets you track the different events, moments, and moods that can have an impact on their decisions.

It can also show how participants learn a new system or product, which can teach you something about customer loyalty.

Overall, this study method exposes users' habits on a daily basis rather than just a particular moment or time.

If direct observation can affect user behavior.

This is true for activities that are private or sensitive to talk about. Having a barrier between the researcher and the participant can influence data and can hinder you from getting more transparent answers. These personal topics are more appropriate in the diary studies setting.

When you want to know what motivates the user to act.

For example, why would someone prefer to ride the Uber than the train? The diary study method can get you with closer behavioral data and depending on the length of the study, you can get good answers about the users' thoughts that impact their decisions.

When you want to know the behaviors that happen occasionally.

Not all behaviors happen on schedule. The best way to know occasional activities is to conduct diary studies. For instance, you want to make sure when parents worry about their kids or when people look for decor inspiration.

A survey method or an interview method will only get you with a glimpse of these experiences. A diary study method, however, will get you more contextual diary entries like "once in a while" or "10x a day".  

When direct observation is not an option in observing the sensitive market.

This has something to do with access, privacy, and location. A diary study, for instance, is a more viable option for teenage participants who prefer to record their activities on their mobile phones rather than talking to an observer.

When there is not enough time for you to conduct the research.

Sometimes things get so busy that you do not have time to conduct your study. Diary studies are the easiest option. Just set-up the parameters and you can work on a more immediate task first. Then after a few weeks, you may get back to check the results.

When you need to impress investors with real and more personal data.

If you want to make a good impression, then a diary study method can help you collect "human moments" such as videos of your participants showing their thoughts and feelings. This type of qualitative data is a straightforward way of making an impact in front of your investors.

What are the topic scopes covered in this methodology?

Depending on the topic, the focus of a diary study ranges from broad to targeted. Below are the topic scopes often covered in diary studies method:

• Product/Website - understanding the interactions with a site over a period of time. Example: Intranet
• Behavior - gathering of information about user behavior. Example: use of smartphones, student web visitation patterns
• General activity - understanding how users complete general activities. Example: online shopping, social media shares
• A specific activity - understanding how users complete specific activities. Example: buying a new house, planning a vacation

How do you set up a diary study?

Rather than giving you a list of tips on running your own diary studies, we at Userpeek came up with a sample case and a step-by-step study process that you can use as reference in conducting your diary study.

SAMPLE DIARY STUDY PROCESS FROM NNGROUP

One of our clients runs a news application that collects, aggregates, and distributes the news.

The UX team is tasked to plot new features based on what the user needs. We decided to run a study that gives us some broad, accurate idea of how our target users stay up-to-date with the current events.

However, the team needs to travel across the country to trail the participants until they click on a headline.

Since this is not a viable option, we decided to conduct a diary study. This method is cost-efficient in understanding better ways the news app may provide more value in their services that can easily fit into the participants day to day needs.  

The step-by-step guide

Step 1: The preparation

Here's a checklist of what you need to prepare:

• Define your research questions to suit the diary studies structure

There are two factors to consider here: the "in-the-moment" and "immediacy" factors.

You need to create questions that take advantage of the diary study structure. because your goal is to capture the "insights" of that moment.

Getting participants to log their responses as soon as they read or take action unveils the new, the interesting, and the nuances of those actions and in return, you will get a closer understanding of their behaviors.  

Additionally, when you write your research questions or hypothesis, you need to decide on a corresponding trigger that tells your participants when to document. 

• Set your start and end dates

Ask yourself these questions: "how long should I run this study?" "how much time do I need to get valuable information?" You do not want your participants to lose interest in logging in for some time.

• Choose the right tool based on your goals, budget, and timeframe

The tool used matters a lot in your research because the right tool will help you properly collect data. You have the following options:

The manual method

You can send a diary to your participants and they can send the diary back to you.

The downside is, it's surely going to be a challenge to read and sort all information from each of the participants. Plus, it can be hard to read that awful handwriting. 

Everything will be done manually including waiting for that mail to arrive and manually importing the data.

There's also a possibility that the participants may misinterpret your instructions if they are unclear. If this happens, you can end up with unusable data.

Having said that, we do not recommend you to use this method unless you have a very small budget to start with.

The DIY method

This is doable for platforms that your participants are already familiar with such as email, Facebook, SMS, Whatsapp, and the likes.

Depending on the platform you use, you may collect multimedia data and you can also send reminders. You may have an automatic search feature as well.

This approach is not that perfect and may leave you some challenges like data import can be a problem and some of your participants may be wary of giving their information over social. Still, if you have a limited budget, this is a viable option.

• Use the available paid tools for research

These tools may not be free but they offer all the nice features that you need to run a successful dairy studies research.

Some of the features for paid research tools include digital diary features with the option to login multimedia entries, set reminders for participants to log their entries, and it works on mobile too.

When choosing the right tool, look for something that allows easy sorting, tagging, and exporting.

• Recruit quality participants

Whatever your research needs are, always get solid recruits. This means you should aim for fewer but better participants.

Screen and segment your participants carefully, considering the conclusions that you want to make.

Do not worry about having only several recruits. Even with a few but quality and engaging participants, you will still be able to get a truckload of information. 

• Choose the right props or stimuli

Remember that props can be mental. If you have an item or product for your participants, get that in the mail as well.

Decide how you want your participants to log in their entries

You can check below some techniques as a guide:

• Interval-contingent protocol :  predetermined intervals for the participants to report. Example: The participants can take notes every 3 hours throughout the day. Where to apply: This is best suited for behaviors that are not situation- dependent, for situations that do not occur on specified moment and time, or for day-to-day activities.
• Event-contingent protocol /in-situation logging: whenever an event occurs, the participant reports. Example: When a participant gets distracted or anxious, he logs in and answers a set of questions.
• Signal-contingent protocol: a set alert or alarm that tells the participants to report.

Our preparation

Our research team considered these factors in coming up with our questions and set-up for our remote study:

We considered the length of time a person would be willing to try the news app before it falls out of habit.

We spent time on research about our target market's use pattern, schedule, and daily activities.

We considered the best times our participants will interact with the app.

After looking at the factors above, we have decided to put our participants on a single workweek timeline for logging.  

We have set some days for any potential post-study reflection sessions.

We have enabled participants to send in multimedia files so we can show these to our stakeholders.

We have decided to use a diary study tool as deemed suited for our needs above.

We have set a single trigger for the participants: They should log right after any active steps taken in using our news app.

We have set reminders in the diary study tool so test subjects are prompted throughout the day. In addition, they are prompted every 7 p.m. to reflect on how informed they feel and how many times they have tuned in to the app.

Step 2: The Process

Congratulations! You made it to the application stage. This is where your planning stage comes to life. 

Here are the questions that may arise once you are already running your study research:

How often should I communicate with the participants?

As often as needed. There is no hard rule here but you should have an idea of what you expect. Do not forget to send them reminders, guidance, and acknowledge their entries.

You should sincerely talk to your participants by being human first, and researcher second.  

Giving your participants frequent feedback will also encourage them to provide better and more detailed responses.      

Be understanding all the time. Your participants deserve more than just "thank you". Saying something like "we are sorry to hear that and we sincerely appreciate your response" whenever they are having a bad day will go a long way.   

What should I do when there is a lot of data coming in?

Do not procrastinate. Take notes as data comes in. And by doing this, you will have a good idea about your follow-up questions. You will also be able to see the participants that need more pushing and encouragement on their digital diary entries.    

Our process

We have assigned members of our team to spend at least several minutes a day reading the participants' entries, responding to them, and reminding them if they missed an entry. 

We also bookmarked all insights that we thought are good so we can pull them easily anytime for synthesis. 

For also take note of all engaged responses as well and flag them as a focal point for our analysis. 

We also spent time responding to test subjects who were upset by the sad news story. We took empathy with them and sincerely thank them for providing their honest feedback. 

Step 3: The follow-up

In this step, you must have already known your participants and you have a good idea of what they have submitted. 

But once you get to know more about them, most likely you still want to know more insights that you like to dive deeper.

In this case, here are our suggestions:

Schedule a follow-up interview with your most engaged participants or users that have unique insights

This helps you confirm your haunch, close a gap, or provide you with the needed insights. With just a 30-minute debriefing after the diary studies research can go a long way with your research.

Ask for feedback

You can ask your participants questions like: Did the study go well? What did you learn from this experience? What are your suggestions that you think can contribute to better study research?

All these questions can lead to exposing biases and improving your future study.

Improve your qualitative data with quantitative data

You can make a chart analysis or run A/B testing with the data you have gathered. Quantitative data may show better and clearer study data that can be used for new hypotheses. 

Our follow up

As our team completed the data, we realized that many of the participants' engagement with the news is passive --- they usually just check the news links sent to them by their family or colleague, or they just click the headline they see on their news feed.

Few people check the app or newsletter for news. Only a few people stay loyal to a particular news source.

We have also found out there are 12 participants who consistently provide engaging insights. We have picked our top 3 from these participants for follow-up questions.

Step 4: The analysis

After you have gathered and completed your data, you need to set a time to sit with the data, track possible patterns, and synthesize everything.

Here are several data analysis tips to take note:

Identify your star participants

These are participants that represent a larger pattern or have given you particular insights. You can tag them as "star participants" and use them as leads in your synthesis and presentations.

You can add quotes and videos from other participating members, which are your supporting cast.

Share insights with investors

You can schedule your presentation and discuss the results to anyone who you know can benefit from an in-depth user insight. This means going beyond just the design or product team.

If your research goals and diary study design were successful, then you can use these data for your company to present results that help investors make sound decisions.

Our analysis

Our team gathered together for a brief synthesis. We looked at the raw data to discuss the possible conclusions.

We have decided on a few important ways that these data can be used.

We recommend new integrations that can work with other discovery mechanisms that the existing market already uses.

We also enlist some jobs to be done based on the motivations and pain points that we have gathered from the study.

To sum it up!

We've learned that there is a wide range of situations where we can use a diary studies method. This method does not have to be any more difficult or time-consuming than other usability tests .  

Even without experience, you can try to set-up your DIY diary studies using the manual method or with the help of the right automation tool.

Have you done any diary studies before? Did you find it extremely useful in terms of gathering data? Share your experience with us. We love to know 🙂  

Related Posts:

Mary Ann Dalangin

About the author

A content marketing strategist and a UX writer with years of experience in the digital marketing industry.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Stop guessing, start knowing. Today.

• What are Diary Studies? Meaning, How and When to Conduct It

Introduction

Diary studies are a powerful research method that can provide valuable insights into a person’s daily life and help researchers understand their behaviors, attitudes, and needs. This article explains the concept of diary studies and their benefits. We’ll also explore situations where they are appropriate.

What is a Diary Study? 

A diary study is a research method that involves asking participants to record their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a diary or journal over an extended period of time. Researchers can gain valuable insights into participants’ experiences and explore various fields using qualitative data from this study.

Researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and human-computer interaction use diary studies. These studies help understand participants’ experiences and responses to events over time. For example, a diary study can investigate how people cope with stress or use technology in their daily lives.

Designing a diary study typically involves selecting a suitable diary or journal for participants to use. Researchers may decide to provide a specific diary or journal to ensure consistency and standardization across participants. Alternatively, they may allow participants to choose their own diary or journal, which can help increase motivation and engagement.

You can conduct diary studies in different ways like in-person, online, or through mobile apps. Also, you can combine them with interviews or surveys to gain a better understanding of the participant’s experiences.

The data collected in a diary study is typically qualitative in nature. The data may be analyzed using methods such as content analysis, grounded theory, or thematic analysis.

Researchers can gain detailed insights into participants’ experiences by conducting diary studies, informing interventions, and generating research questions.

Why Should I Run a Diary Study? 

Diary studies can be a powerful tool for understanding human behavior in natural settings. By collecting data from participants over an extended period, researchers can gain a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of their experiences than they would through traditional survey or interview methods. 

Diary studies can provide insights into the daily lives of participants, which can be used to develop products, services, or interventions that better meet their needs.

When is a Diary Study a Good Fit? 

Researchers use diary studies to capture nuances of everyday life and understand contextual factors’ impact on behavior. They’re also useful to understand longitudinal changes in behavior or attitudes.  Diary studies are also useful when researchers want to understand the experiences of specific populations, such as individuals with chronic illnesses, or when they want to collect data on sensitive topics, such as mental health or substance abuse.

Read Also – Demographic Analysis: Meaning, Components, Importance

When Should I Use a Different Study Type? 

While diary studies can be a powerful research method, they may not always be the best fit for every research question or situation. Here are some scenarios where a different study type may be more appropriate:

• When the research question requires quantitative data: Diary studies tend to produce qualitative data, which may not be appropriate for certain research questions. For example, if the research question requires numerical data, a diary study may not be the best choice.
• When the sample size needs to be large: Diary studies can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, particularly if the data needs to be analyzed manually. You may need to use a different study type if you require a large sample size.
• When the research question requires experimental control: Diary studies are used by researchers to observe real-life settings. However, they have limited control over the environment and behavior. If the study requires experimental control, a lab experiment may be more suitable.
• When the research question requires a specific method of data collection: Diary studies can be effective for data collection, but may not work for all research questions. If researchers require physiological data such as heart rate or brain activity, they need to use a different method.

How to Run Your User Diary Study From A-Z 

• Step 1: Prepare the diary study: Before starting a diary study, you need to define your research question and determine the goals of the study.  Then, decide the logistics, including entry duration, data collection frequency, and diary type.
• Step 2: Design the study: Design the study by developing a protocol that outlines the procedures for data collection and analysis. Include instructions for recording experiences, submission frequency, and method in diary studies for participant guidance. It’s also important to include any consent forms and to adhere to ethical considerations.
• Step 3: Recruit the participants: Recruit participants who meet the inclusion criteria for the study. When recruiting participants, use active methods like social media, ads, or emails. Ensure they understand study goals, requirements, and compensation.
• Step 4: Launch and Follow-up: Launch the study by providing participants with a diary or journal to record their experiences. Provide clear instructions on what to record and how often to submit their entries. It’s also important to monitor the quality of the data and address any issues that arise during the data collection period. To ensure participants complete diary entries as instructed, follow up and address any concerns or questions they may have.
• Step 5: End the study and get the diaries back: End the study by collecting the diaries from participants. This can be done in person or by mail. It’s important to ensure that the diaries are returned in a timely manner and to thank participants for their participation.
• Step 6: Analyze the data: Analyze the data by using qualitative methods such as content analysis, grounded theory, or thematic analysis. This involves identifying themes and patterns in the data and organizing them into meaningful categories.
• Step 7: Follow up with the users: Follow up with participants to share the results of the study and to gather feedback on their experience. This can be done through individual interviews, focus groups, or surveys.
• Step 8: Sharing the research results: Share the results of the diary study by creating a report or presenting the findings at a conference. Consider the audience for the results and tailor the communication of the findings accordingly. It’s also important to acknowledge any limitations of the study and to discuss areas for further research.

Advantages and When to Use This Method

The diary study method offers several advantages for researchers. Here are some of the advantages and when to use this method:

• Rich and detailed data: Diary studies provide rich, detailed data on participants’ experiences and behaviors over an extended period of time. This can be particularly useful when researchers want to gain a deep understanding of participants’ experiences, thoughts, and emotions.
• Naturalistic setting: Diary studies are conducted in the participants’ natural settings, such as their homes or workplace. This allows researchers to capture real-life experiences and behaviors, rather than relying on participants’ self-reports or laboratory settings.
• Flexibility: Diary studies are flexible and can be adapted to suit different research questions and contexts. Researchers can use different prompts or questions to guide participants and can choose the frequency and duration of the diary entries.
• Longitudinal data: Diary studies provide longitudinal data, which allows researchers to track changes over time. This can be particularly useful when investigating the effects of interventions or treatments.
• Participant engagement: Diary studies can increase participant engagement and provide a sense of ownership over the research process. Participants may feel more invested in the study and be more likely to provide honest and detailed responses.

Limitations and Pitfalls of User Diary Studies 

While diary studies can be a valuable research method, there are also limitations and potential pitfalls that researchers should be aware of. Here are some of the most common limitations and pitfalls of user diary studies:

• Self-selection bias: Participants who agree to take part in a diary study may not be representative of the wider population. This can lead to self-selection bias. Those who participate may have more interest or time, resulting in overrepresentation.
• Social desirability bias: Participants may be reluctant to record negative experiences or behaviors in their diary, due to social desirability bias. This can lead to a skewed or incomplete picture of their actual experiences.
• Memory recall bias: When people fill out a diary entry later, they might not recall their experiences precisely. So, they may not report accurately.
• Drop-out rate: Participants may drop out of the study before completing all the diary entries, which can lead to missing data and reduce the overall validity of the study.
• Interpretation bias: The interpretation of diary entries can be subjective and open to interpretation, particularly when using qualitative analysis methods.
• Technical difficulties: Technical difficulties, such as problems with the diary format or issues with the software used to collect the diary data, can impact the validity of the study.
• Time-consuming: Diary studies can be time-consuming for both participants and researchers. Participants might spend lots of time writing diaries, while researchers analyze data for a long time.

Diary studies are useful for gaining deep insights into participants’ experiences and behaviors in their natural settings. Researchers can study participants over an extended period of time, providing a more accurate representation of their lives. This method can be particularly useful when investigating complex phenomena, such as stress, coping mechanisms, or technology use. 

However, they may not be suitable for all situations. Researchers should choose study types based on their research needs.

Connect to Formplus, Get Started Now - It's Free!

• consumer insights
• demographic analysis
• diary study
• research method
• Olayemi Jemimah Aransiola

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

Conducting a diary study to understand user behavior

Considering using a diary study to get to know your users, their goals, preferences, and behavior better? Then look no further.

In this article, we’ll run you through everything you need to know about this handy UX research methodology, including a hands-on guide to conducting your first one.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is a diary study?

Why use a diary study, types of diary studies, how to conduct a diary study, planning your diary study.

• Commencing your diary study

Data collection and analysis

Best practices for diary study analysis.

Ready to get started? Then let’s go!

A diary study is a popular methodology used by UX teams that provides a record of the thoughts, experiences, ideas, and activities of users over a specific time period. Asking users to self-report in this way provides UX designers and researchers with a longitudinal record of users’ preferences and behaviors. This log can then be analyzed by the team for a more accurate understanding of their users’ overall experiences with a product, feature, or service.

There are numerous advantages to conducting a diary study. As well as being an option that requires fewer resources than other UX methodologies, diary research provides real-life context to the problem you are trying to solve. It does this because your users are giving you specific details in their own words about how they are trying to solve the problem posed.

Diary studies offer UX researchers a flexible research methodology that can be used to help solve a variety of different issues. Whether you’re investigating what your competitors are up to, looking to improve your existing products, or simply hoping to better understand your current users, diary studies will provide valuable insights straight from the source.

Diary study research can also be a useful tool when your first early-stage prototypes are ready to be tested. You can assess the current popularity and success of the design with your users, as well as swiftly pinpoint any challenges they face, even at this early stage. They may even express in their diary entries their own ideas about how the design could be improved.

When your product has been developed, a diary study offers valuable insights into the user’s experience with your product in its final form. You can assess how well user expectations are met, uncover previously unseen issues, and identify any opportunities to improve the product based on this detailed user feedback.

Post-product launch, your users’ diary entries can be used to understand how well the product is functioning in a real-world setting and if any further adjustments or improvements could or should be made to future versions.

Before you start your diary study research, you’ll need to choose which type of diary study works best for the issue you are trying to get more data on.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

Open diary study

As a free-form type of journal, an open diary study offers users a good amount of flexibility and freedom in how they record their experiences. Users can use the diary as they see fit, recording the thoughts or interactions with the product that they consider to be useful or of greatest importance.

While the UX team will provide some initial guidance in terms of, for example, how often to write in the diary and what information or thoughts users should consider including, generally the open diary format seeks to inspire free-flowing thought and expression.

Pros of an open diary study

An open diary study is a great way of introducing less-experienced users to a UX research study because it requires very little knowledge of UX or product development from those taking part.

In addition, users are likely to record information about their experiences with the product, feature, or service that the UX team have not previously considered, which is a great way for the UX team to learn more about the user’s experience and how they might improve it.

Cons of an open diary study

One of the disadvantages of conducting an open diary study is that the UX team may not get all the information or details they actually need from participants. Additionally, they may get a lot of information that they don’t need at all. This can mean that time is taken up reading through diary entries as the team looks for the entries which are relevant to the study.

Closed diary study

In contrast to an open diary study, a closed diary study is a more structured approach to this research method, providing users with a fixed set of questions to answer every day (or however regularly they are required to write in it). A closed diary study may also include specific instructions from the UX research team that the user needs to follow.

Pros of a closed diary study:

Data collected during a closed diary study is significantly easier to analyze and assess than the data from an open diary study. The preformatted questions and instructions of a closed study mean the team is only getting information that is relevant to the research.

Because the data received from participants is also in response to the same set of questions, the UX team can also much more easily compare and contrast answers between different users.

Cons of a closed diary study

Unlike an open diary study, the fixed nature of a closed diary study often means that researchers miss out on hearing about challenges or insights which the user hasn’t been specifically asked to comment upon.

While one of the advantages of conducting a diary study over other kinds of UX research is that it can be a fairly hands-off process for the UX team, there are still some key elements you’ll want to have in place in order to ensure it runs successfully.

Let’s take a look at what you need to plan and manage a diary study in order to get results.

For the UX team, most of the work that goes into a diary study is in the planning of it. When you begin your first diary study, you’ll need to determine your objectives, decide which type of diary study you’d like to conduct, write your users’ questions, and plan a start and end date.

1. What are your objectives?

In order to determine the goals of the research, you’ll first need to decide what sort of information you’re hoping to extract from your diary study participants:

• Do you want to understand how specific interactions with your product or service occur?
• Or do you want to know how the user feels while performing those interactions?
• Is there a new feature you want to test with users?
• Are you wondering why so many users abandon their shopping carts before making a purchase?

Establishing clear objectives now will guide and inform the research questions you’ll need to prepare. You’ll also want to think about whether you cover multiple topics in this diary study or focus on just one area.

2. Which type of diary research?

Next up in the planning phase is deciding which type of diary research you’d like to conduct. Are you hoping to get a more general feel of your product from an outside perspective, or do you need specific questions answered regarding a challenge or recurring issue?

Depending on these variables, you’ll want to choose either a closed diary study or an open diary study. (Some UX teams opt for a combined approach in order to get the most out of the research.)

Quantitative vs. qualitative data

When considering which type of diary study to conduct, it’s worth taking into account the specific type of data you’d like to collect; quantitative data or qualitative data (or both).

Quantitative data is measurable, numerical data, which can be used to identify the statistical significance in your findings. This type of data can be collected using close-ended questions, a Likert scale (where a user chooses a number on a scale to represent their answer, e.g,, 1=very bad and 5=very good), or questions with multiple-choice answers.

If you’re looking to gather quantitative data and get clear, measurable answers to specific questions, then a closed diary study is probably the best fit for your needs.

Qualitative data , on the other hand, provides researchers with more context and information around user behavior. It is non-numerical data that provides deeper insights into individuals’ beliefs, preferences, and understandings of a particular situation.

If qualitative data describes the sort of information and insights you need from your research, then it would be advisable to go for an open diary study.

3. Write your research questions

With your objectives pinned down and your diary style chosen, writing your research questions should be a fairly straightforward process at this stage in the planning process. Open diary study questions you might consider including are:

• How did it feel interacting with [product name]?
• What was your favorite thing about using [product name]?
• What was the biggest challenge you faced using [product name]?
• What would you change about [product name]?
• Describe your interaction with [product name] from start to end
• How did using [product name] compare with when you used it yesterday/last week/last month? Was it easier or harder?
• How did [product name] compare to similar products you have used? Was it better or worse?

Closed diary study questions might look more like this:

1=Very difficult; 2=Difficult; 3=Not easy or difficult; 4=Easy; 5=Very easy

• Using the scale, how would you describe your overall interaction with [product name]?
• Using the scale, how would you describe navigation between your cart and the checkout?
• Using the scale, how difficult or easy to understand was the on-page text?
• Using the scale, how difficult or easy was it to complete a purchase?
• Using the scale, compared with yesterday, how easy or difficult was it to change your profile picture?

4. Decide on a timeframe

The timeframe of your study will really depend on your overarching goals for the research as well as how much interaction with the product is required to get the data you need.

While some diary studies might take place over the course of a few days, others can take months. You’ll also need to gauge how much time a participant will need to set aside each day in order to complete the diary entries.

5. Select and recruit participants

Selecting and recruiting the right participants for your diary study will be a determining factor in its overall success.

You’ll be looking for individuals who can and will respond promptly to communication from the UX researchers and answer questions with the amount of detail you need to understand their perspective fully. Your participants will therefore need to be people who are keen to express their thoughts and happy to share them.

As we have seen, there can be a considerable and sometimes long-term time commitment involved in becoming a participant in a diary study. It’s important that you communicate this with potential participants before they agree to take part so they can see if this works with their own schedules.

In addition, the UX team will need to be clear with interested parties about what exactly will be expected of them on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis so that all expectations are aligned before the study begins and those who cannot commit can opt out in advance.

Another aspect to consider when recruiting for your diary study is the format by which users might be asked to give their responses. Some participants might prefer to write down their answers by hand, others might wish to log theirs online, and others might be used to recording video-based responses.

If your team has a preference for how they wish to collate data, express this to interested participants during the recruitment process; if an individual is only comfortable writing their answers by hand, but you need them logged in an online format, then you might have to reconsider recruiting them.

Some UX teams choose to interview potential participants as part of the recruitment process to assess their suitability for the study. This can be useful for gauging an individual’s commitment to the project and ensuring that they have a thorough understanding of expectations before signing up.

If you’re hoping for participants to contribute their answers to the study via video, an interview can also go some way toward informing the team of how clearly or thoughtfully the potential participant expresses their opinions.

If you plan on using incentives to motivate participants, don’t forget to be explicit from the start of the recruitment process about what these will be and when the participants can expect to receive them.

Commencing the diary study

So you’ve decided on your objectives, chosen a type of diary study, written your research questions, nailed down a timeframe, and, finally, selected and recruited your participants: it looks like you’re good to go!

Once you’ve sent out the questions along with some guidelines regarding what you’re expecting from the diary entries, you’re going to be pretty hands off during this research study.

Although a diary study involves considerably less involvement than other types of UX research, there will still be some small administrative tasks to attend to while the study is running.

For example, you may choose to set up reminder emails or notifications for your participants to ensure they stay on track with their diary contributions. Additionally, it’s probably wise to check in with them every now and then to make sure everything is running smoothly. Finally, you should be prepared to answer incoming queries from participants who may need clarification of what’s expected of them, or are having technical issues.

It’s important to recognize the effort and contribution your participants are making to be a part of the study, so be sure that any communication you have with them is friendly and appreciative. Keep an eye on individuals who are struggling and respect each person’s boundaries.

Have you chosen to have entries be sent to you as they are logged, or will you receive everything from participants at the end of the dedicated time period? If you’ve selected the former, take notes and process the entries as you go, so as not to get overwhelmed.

If you’ve selected the latter, consider using a smart diary study tool to help you organize entries. These can often assist in other areas too, such as sending reminders, and recruiting participants. My favorites are: dscout , Indeemo , SurveySignal , MetricWire , and QuestionPro .

After the study

After the study has concluded, ask participants for their feedback on the process. You may also want to conduct post-study interviews to get more detail on top of their diary entries or to clarify specific points.

If you’re manually collecting and analyzing data rather than using a diary study tool, your first step will be transcribing your diaries and logging entries in one place, such as a spreadsheet.

Once all of your entries are in one accessible place, you’ll need to start sifting through the data and looking out for patterns and trends. From here, you can begin to put together your first hypotheses.

At this stage, it can help to pinpoint strong participants who have submitted data that is particularly thoughtful, detailed, or thorough. This is because the more robust the information from one candidate is, the easier it will be to identify patterns within their entries. Once identified, these patterns can then be supported with evidence from other participants whose entries might be slightly less detailed.

Tagging your data with the correct labels is another important aspect of data collection and analysis. This will save you a considerable amount of time when trying to locate key pieces of information later on and make it much easier to spot patterns and trends.

Consider using a tool

While one of the benefits of a diary study is that it requires relatively few resources when compared to other types of UX research methods, it’s not a bad idea to consider using a free or paid-for diary study tool.

These days, digital diary study tools can assist throughout the entire process, from helping you define your objectives and write your questions to recruiting participants and organizing and analyzing your data.

Although analog is always an option, digitizing the process will streamline activities and save you time and stress in the long run.

Onboard participants

If you want to ensure the success of your diary study, onboard your participants properly! This can be done with a short briefing document that is sent to participants along with the questions, or, even better, done via a short video call. The more prepared your participants are, the higher the quality of answers will be that you’ll receive.

Stay in touch with participants throughout

It should go without saying, but you’ll want to check in on your participants over the course of the diary study. Depending on their preferred method of communication, make sure they know you’re available to help out if there are any hiccups or if they simply have a question about the process.

Consider using incentives

For some shorter studies, participants are happy to help out without being incentivized, but for longer studies it makes sense to offer participants incentives to keep them motivated and to encourage high quality contributions. This UX research incentives calculator is a useful tool for calculating exactly what to offer.

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about diary studies in this article! I’ve covered what a diary study is and why it’s a valuable UX research method as well as provided you with the steps you need to plan and conduct one successfully.

Want to know my top tips? Here they are!

• Make sure you select the diary study type that best suits your needs; if you need detailed, nuanced insights about the user’s experience with your product, opt for an open diary study. If you need measurable, comparable stats or figures, a closed diary study will better serve your needs.
• Finally, keep the lines of communication open between the UX team and your participants; you may need to tweak the process along the way, and the more available you are to participants the easier that will be. Good luck!

Header image source : IconScout

LogRocket : Analytics that give you UX insights without the need for interviews

LogRocket lets you replay users' product experiences to visualize struggle, see issues affecting adoption, and combine qualitative and quantitative data so you can create amazing digital experiences.

See how design choices, interactions, and issues affect your users — get a demo of LogRocket today .

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #ux research

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

Enterprise design thinking: The framework for good product design

Enterprise design thinking aims to align teams around a common goal and support them in working more efficiently while keeping their work centered around people.

A UX designer’s guide to Storybook

Storybook is a platform for UI development, testing, and documentation that can help designers develop UI components and pages in isolation.

The lasting negative effects of confirmshaming

Confirmshaming targets users’ emotions, increasing the likelihood they’ll give in to pressure — but it has numerous negative effects.

Design bias: The 10 biases designers must avoid

This article will help you identify 10 potential biases that can affect your UX design work and show you how to avoid them.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Daily Diary Methodology

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 24 December 2020
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Tanja Lischetzke 2 &
• Tanja Könen 2  

337 Accesses

1 Citations

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Conner, T. S., & Barrett, L. F. (2012). Trends in ambulatory self-report: The role of momentary experience in psychosomatic medicine. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74 , 327–337.

Article   Google Scholar  

Conner, T. S., & Lehman, B. J. (2012). Getting started: Launching a study in daily life. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 89–107). New York: Guilford.

Google Scholar  

Conner, T. S., & Reid, K. A. (2012). Effects of intensive mobile happiness reporting in daily life. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3 , 315–323.

Cranford, J. A., Shrout, P. E., Iida, M., Rafaeli, E., Yip, T., & Bolger, N. (2006). A procedure for evaluating sensitivity to within-person change: Can mood measures in diary studies detect change reliably? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32 , 917–929.

Crayen, C., Eid, M., Lischetzke, T., Courvoisier, D. S., & Vermunt, J. K. (2012). Exploring dynamics in mood regulation – Mixture latent Markov modeling of ambulatory assessment data. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74 , 366–376.

Crayen, C., Eid, M., Lischetzke, T., & Vermunt, J. (2017). A continuous-time mixture latent state-trait Markov model for experience sampling data: Application and evaluation. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 33 , 296–311.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1987). Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175 , 526–536.

Ebner-Priemer, U. W., & Trull, T. J. (2012). Investigating temporal instability in psychological variables: Understanding the real world as time dependent. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 423–439). New York: Guilford.

Eid, M., Courvoisier, D., & Lischetzke, T. (2012). Structural equation modeling of ambulatory assessment data. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 384–406). New York: Guilford.

Enders, C. K., & Tofighi, D. (2007). Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel models: A new look at an old issue. Psychological Methods, 12 , 121–138.

Geldhof, G. J., Preacher, K. J., & Zyphur, M. J. (2014). Reliability estimation in a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis framework. Psychological Methods, 19 , 72–91.

Gunthert, K. C., & Wenze, S. J. (2012). Daily diary methods. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 144–159). New York: Guilford.

Hamaker, E. L. (2012). Why researchers should think “within-person”: A paradigmatic rationale. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 43–61). New York: Guilford.

Hamaker, E. L., & Wichers, M. (2017). No time like the present. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26 , 10–15.

Hamaker, E. L., Ceulemans, E., Grasman, R. P. P. P., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2015). Modeling affect dynamics: State of the art and future challenges. Emotion Review, 7 , 316–322.

Hektner, J. M., Schmidt, J. A., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007). Experience sampling method: Measuring the quality of everyday life . Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Book   Google Scholar  

Heron, K. E., & Smyth, J. M. (2013). Is intensive measurement of body image reactive? A two-study evaluation using ecological momentary assessment suggests not. Body Image, 10 , 35–44.

Heron, K. E., Everhart, R. S., McHale, S. M., & Smyth, J. M. (2017). Using mobile-technology-based Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) methods with youth: A systematic review and recommendations. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 42 , 1087–1107.

Hox, J. J., Moerbeek, M., & van de Schoot, R. (2018). Multilevel analysis: Techniques and applications (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Kahneman, D. (1999). Objective happiness. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 3–25). New York: Russell Sage.

Könen, T., Dirk, J., Leonhardt, A., & Schmiedek, F. (2016). The interplay between sleep behavior and affect in elementary school children’s daily life. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 150 , 1–15.

Mehl, M. R., & Conner, T. S. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of research methods for studying daily life . New York: Guilford.

Molenaar, P. C. M., & Campbell, C. G. (2009). The new person-specific paradigm in psychology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18 , 112–117.

Moskowitz, D. S., & Sadikaj, G. (2012). Event-contingent recording. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 160–175). New York: Guilford.

Nesselroade, J. R. (1991). The warp and woof of the developmental fabric. In R. M. Downs, L. S. Lybben, & D. S. Palermo (Eds.), Visions of aesthetics, the environment, and development: The legacy of Joachim F. Wohlwill (pp. 213–240). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Neubauer, A. B., Voelkle, M. C., Voss, A., & Mertens, U. K. (2019). Estimating reliability of within-person couplings in a multilevel framework. Journal of Personality Assessment, 102 , 10–21.

Nezlek, J. B. (2017). A practical guide to understanding reliability in studies of within-person variability. Journal of Research in Personality, 69 , 149–155.

Raugh, I. M., Chapman, H. C., Bartolomeo, L. A., Gonzalez, C., & Strauss, G. P. (2019). A comprehensive review of psychophysiological applications for ecological momentary assessment in psychiatric populations. Psychological Assessment, 31 , 304–317.

Reis, H. T. (2012). Why researchers should think “real-world”: A conceptual rationale. In M. R. Mehl & T. S. Conner (Eds.), Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (pp. 3–21). New York: Guilford.

Reynolds, B. M., Robles, T. F., & Repetti, R. L. (2016). Measurement reactivity and fatigue effects in daily diary research with families. Developmental Psychology, 52 , 442–456.

Robinson, M. D., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Belief and feeling: Evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report. Psychological Bulletin, 128 , 934–960.

Scollon, C. N., Kim-Prieto, C., & Diener, E. (2003). Experience sampling: Promises and pitfalls, strengths and weaknesses. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4 , 5–34.

Shrout, P. E., Stadler, G., Lane, S. P., McClure, M. J., Jackson, G. L., Clavel, F. D., … Bolger, N. (2018). Initial elevation bias in subjective reports. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 115 (1), E15–E23.

Singer, J. D., & Willett, J. B. (2003). Applied longitudinal data analysis. Modeling change and event occurrence . New York: Oxford University Press.

Sliwinski, M. J. (2008). Measurement-burst designs for social health research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2 , 245–261.

Sliwinski, M. J., Mogle, J. A., Hyun, J., Munoz, E., Smyth, J. M., & Lipton, R. B. (2018). Reliability and validity of ambulatory cognitive assessments. Assessment, 25 , 14–30.

Snijders, T., & Bosker, R. (2012). Multilevel analysis: An introduction to basic and advanced multilevel modeling (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

van Berkel, N., Ferreira, D., & Kostakos, V. (2017). The experience sampling method on mobile devices. ACM Computing Surveys, 50 , 1–40.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany

Tanja Lischetzke & Tanja Könen

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tanja Lischetzke .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy

Filomena Maggino

Section Editor information

Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

Youngmee Kim

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Lischetzke, T., Könen, T. (2021). Daily Diary Methodology. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_657-2

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_657-2

Received : 12 November 2019

Accepted : 15 November 2020

Published : 24 December 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-69909-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-69909-7

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Blog Home Home
• Explore by categories Categories TOPICS Case Studies Information Architecture Product Development UI/UX Design User Research User Testing UX Career UX Tips Women in UX
• News and Updates News

Save Time and Frustration

Say No to Poorly Designed Products!

Published on September 12, 2022

Diary Studies: a Qualitative Study of Your Users’ Behavior

This article will show you how diary studies can provide insights into the way people use your products and whether or not they like them—no matter where they live!

Table of contents

What are diary studies, methods of conducting diary studies, when to use diary studies, how to conduct diary studies, the advantages of diary studies, the disadvantages of diary studies, unlock valuable user insights with diary studies.

Above is a fantastic example of a diary study by Krisztina Szerovay , founder of the UX Knowledge Base Sketch.

A diary study is a UX Research Method that examines participants’ daily activities. It seems simple, right? Well, it is! It’s comparable to an experiment in that you don’t have to change the conditions or elements in order to observe how they affect behavior; instead, you simply watch what happens.

Because there are no randomization factors like in experiments (i.e., participants are assigned to conditions randomly), you can’t assume that your findings will generalize beyond the specific population being studied.

The diary study is designed to determine the factors influencing consumer behavior. Psychologist E.R. Dodds developed it in the 1920s and 1930s, and it has since been used extensively in consumer research, marketing studies, and of course, UX design.

Diary studies can be used for many different purposes: they’ve been used by psychologists as well as marketers and behavioral economists to understand consumer decision-making processes; they’ve also been used by sociologists and anthropologists who examine culture through diaries kept over periods, ranging from weeks to as long as decades (sometimes even centuries).

There are two primary methods of conducting diary studies. And while you can use whatever way you want to collect your data, there are some guidelines to help you map out how to do so.

Here are some strategies:

• Start with a question or hypothesis that you want to explore , and then narrow down the scope of your study based on what’s important to you. For example, if your goal is to understand how users feel about their product, then focus on just those feelings (not necessarily the product itself).
• Create a list of possible interviewees (people who could potentially be interviewed) based on demographics such as age, gender, job position, and location. These people have used or interacted with your product previously, but for whom there has been little or no data available for analysis purposes (i.e., they have not been surveyed before).

1. Freeform/open diary study

This is a non-constrained approach to collecting data. Participants are free to record their experiences in whatever way they choose; however, the researcher needs to be aware of any potential bias (e.g., participants may not feel comfortable divulging certain aspects of their lives). 

This method is often used in qualitative research because it allows participants to provide rich and detailed responses which can be unpacked further with other forms. Freeform diaries can be used as part of a mixed methods approach, or they can be used as the sole method for collecting data.

2. Structured/closed diary study

In this study, participants are asked to complete a diary at predetermined intervals over a set period. They are asked questions about their daily routine and experiences, and their answers may be recorded by researchers who then analyze this data. 

There are several advantages when using this method:

• it allows for greater control over the research process and its design
• it lends itself well to repeated measures designs
• it provides information about participant experience over time, which may not be possible through other methods
• it enables researchers to examine patterns over time.

Diary studies are a great way to collect qualitative data . They’re convenient for collecting data about user behavior over time, which can help you understand how users think and feel about your product. Diary studies also allow you to collect data on user behavior, which is critical when determining whether or not your product is meeting their needs.

This method can be beneficial when you want to understand how a user’s behavior changes over different contexts. They’re also helpful for understanding how users interact with your product in other contexts.

There are many ways you can use diary studies within an organization. Either conduct them on a small scale with just a few participants or on a large scale with thousands of participants across multiple countries or organizations. It’s a great way to understand customer journeys (e.g., “how do customers interact with our website?”) or product use (e.g., “what do customers do when they buy our product?”).

Diary studies are most effective when combined with other qualitative research methods (e.g., surveys) because they provide rich feedback from real people interacting with products in their daily lives. They can also be used as part of a larger research project that includes quantitative data collection as well (e.g., interviews). 

1. Choose a medium

To conduct a diary study, the first and the most convenient thing to do is create an account on a site like UXtweak , which will host all of your responses. The diary should be intuitive, clear, and well-designed. Ensure users know they are participating in a study and what they need to do. 

From there, you’ll need to create a survey that utilizes a series of questions about users’ experiences with your product — for example:

“How did you discover the product?”

“What were your thoughts during this experience?”

“What would be the most helpful improvement for future products?”

Just like the materials you use to build the subject matter, the participants you research are the same case. These people represent your target audience. They’re the ones who will be using your product first-hand, and so their opinion matters deeply.

2. Choosing your participants

Picking your participants carefully is essential for several reasons. For example, if you’re testing a new product with your target audience, you’ll want to ensure that the people participating in your research are representative of your user group. If you don’t, you might end up with an unrepresentative sample and have trouble generalizing from that data set.

Another reason for choosing carefully is that it’s essential to understand what kind of people will use your product. If all of your users are young women in their 20s who live in New York City, then it makes sense to focus on those people when conducting interviews with them.

Make sure users know they can stop at any time. Participants must have the option to end their participation whenever they wish, without feeling pressured to continue. For example, if an interviewer asks about something that makes them uncomfortable, then allow them to leave the conversation immediately and find another more willing subject.

Your study may need as few as three or as many as 30 participants, depending on the scope and budget. Ideally, you should recruit 10-15 participants and a couple of backups for a diary study.

Create a diary study with UXtweak

The only UX research tool you need to visualize your customers’ frustration and better understand their issues

3. Proceed with research

It’s time for the magic to begin! 

When you’re in the discovery phase, go through a discovery session with your target users and make sure they are comfortable with the idea of sharing their diary data with you. This can be done during an interview or through a questionnaire where users are asked to share their diary entries with you.

After narrowing down the ideal participant, use UXtweak’s recruiting widget or our 160M+ User Panel to gather the best candidates for your research and screen them.

Depending on your diary and logging style, you may want to interact with participants more or less during your study. Be constant with reminders or notifications and never forget to be polite. Pay attention to the opinions of active participants and follow up with anyone who seems to be having trouble. Participating in the study exposes a vulnerable aspect of themselves, so they respect their limits and offer assistance as needed.

Testing early-stage prototypes is a great way to test your hypotheses before launching your product or service. You want to see if your design works, so this is an excellent opportunity to get feedback from users before you go into development.

4. Post Diary study observation 

It would help if you met with each participant after your study ends to discuss entries in detail. If this isn’t possible, an asynchronous interview or survey works well too.

In the post-study interview, you can ask participants to expand on information where needed and ask any follow-up questions you remembered part way through the study.

 At the end of development, when your product is finished and ready for launch, this is the time to conduct diary studies with real users. This will help validate that what you’ve built works by comparing actual results with predicted ones using statistical analysis tools. 

5. Analyze the data gathered

Sort your top players by data strength or unique patterns: Who stands out? Remove these people’s impressions and add them to your theory as additional evidence because establishing a routine is much easier.

After the design and implementation, there is an opportunity to analyze the data and make adjustments based on findings from previous phases of research. Suppose you have conducted follow-up interviews with participants or analyzed their responses to open-ended questions at multiple stages of your study. In that case, this is one way to ensure that all participants are treated fairly and equally during data analysis.

Convenience and freedom

Diary studies allow participants to keep track of their experiences whenever they want. Moreover, you can review your entries immediately or later. It’s easy for participants to mark down what they think is relevant to a prime or trigger you’ve made, and you can review it whenever it’s convenient for you. 

Gives participants more insight into who they are

Using diary studies helps your participants discover themselves in a more meaningful, but not so tactical way. After completing a diary study, participants are usually more aware of their feelings, routines, and behaviors.

Allows to reach vulnerable populations

It is vital to reach vulnerable populations when direct observation is not possible. There are several reasons for this, including privacy, geography, and access. Sometimes, it simply boils down to how your target participants act. It’s much easier for some people to open up online than in person. 

Participants may get bored

Participants may lose their enthusiasm or forget — not every participant will record their diary entries accurately and may get tired before the trial ends.

Data is difficult to analyze

Quantitative data evaluation differs from qualitative data analysis due to its laborious nature and difficulty in automating. Unlike other qualitative data types, diary research is more challenging to analyze due to the mental ramblings involved.

Reported data may not be accurate

It is generally accepted that human narrators are unreliable due to their blind spots, biases, and lack of self-predictive skills. We all forget details, misremember information, report facts incorrectly or partially, and introduce unconscious biases into our observations, even the most conscientious, morally upright people.

A well-designed diary study can help you determine what your users want and how they think about your product or service. 

With a good diary study, you can choose how to improve your product’s user experience based on your target audience’s needs and opinions — so it’s no wonder many designers have been using diary studies in their day-to-day UX work. 

UXtweak offers many excellent tools for making the most of your diary studies. Sign up for your free account and streamline your research with our all-in-one platform !

People also ask (FAQ)

Usually, UX diary studies take from 1 to 4 weeks. The length of the study depends on its objectives. Carefully planning your research in advance (the objectives, target participants, research form, etc.) and using a UX research tool like UXtweak to conduct the diary test can save much time and improve efficiency of your research.

A UX diary study is a qualitative research method that helps you get a detailed understanding of user behavior over time. During a diary study participants record their experiences, thoughts and feelings, either in written or video format, which are later analyzed by UX researchers to identify user behavior patterns.

• Identify the research area/questions 
• Recruit participants
• Provide instructions for keeping the diary 
• Collect diary entries over time 
• Examine outcomes with qualitative analysis

Eniola Olaniyi is a Content Writer at UXtweak, where she focuses on creating informative and engaging content related to user experience and design. With a background in UX design, Eniola is on a mission to help businesses create products and services that meet the needs of their users. In her role at UXtweak, Eniola works closely with other writers to apply her UX expertise, research the topics and come up with valuable content pieces. When she's not working, Eniola enjoys reading articles and case studies on UX design and exploring new ways to enhance her writing skills.

UXtweak is buzzing with expert UX research, making thousands of products more user friendly every day

You might be interested in

Participant Recruitment in Qualitative Research

In this article, we'll look at different techniques for participant recruitment in qualitative research and explain who you should recruit as well as how to motivate them to participate in your study. Read more ...

Conversion Research: A Beginner’s Roadmap to Success

Learn everything you need to know about conversion research and ways to incorporate it into the CRO process. Discover conversion research methods and tools that can help! Read more ...

Top 14 Lucky Orange Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

Discover the unique features and use cases of the top UX research analytics tools that will help you decide if Lucky Orange is still the right choice for your UX research project. Read more ...

• Card Sorting
• Tree Testing
• Preference Test
• Five Second Test
• Session Recording
• Mobile Testing
• First Click Test
• Prototype Testing
• Website Testing
• Onsite Recruiting
• Own Database
• Documentation
• Product features
• UX Glossary
• Comparisons

Diary study templates

Get actionable insights every time

Analyze participant entries from a diary study to understand user behavior and experiences, and to identify patterns and themes in the data.

Last updated

10 April 2023

Reviewed by

Create actionable insights from your diary studies

If you’re looking for a useful and interesting way to uncover how your users feel about something and their behaviors over time, consider diary studies. 

There are several reasons to consider a diary study, such as it is more of a "hands-off" method for collecting data. Your users can do it from anywhere, which can be cost-effective. 

Of course, having the right template for your diary study is essential to its success. You can customize templates for multiple studies, allowing the researcher to create studies without starting from scratch each time.

What is a diary study?

Diary studies or user diaries are a way to study users' habits, behaviors, activities, and experiences of a product or service. You usually do this study toward the beginning or discovery stage of your research, and it can last for a specific period of time. The participants of a diary study keep a log or diary of their user experience for that time frame. It can last a few days or several weeks. 

Diary studies are a cost-effective alternative to field surveys or studies, where you bring participants to a site for observation. With diary studies, participants can record or log their experiences when and where they occur. Generally, diary studies are qualitative in nature and help you understand the users' experiences with day-to-day documentation.

Why should I run a diary study?

Since diary studies take place when a participant logs their experience, it can happen without a major disruption in their day—or yours. In fact, it can happen when they want to make a note about a thought or an issue when it happens. You can review the responses in real time or whenever it is convenient for you. This differs from field studies, as you don't have to arrange schedules, plan travel, or hire outside help to fulfill your on-site requirements. 

Some studies may require a study sample from a large geographic area. With a diary study, geographic location doesn’t limit you. In a global business environment, you are able to include representative participants from anywhere.

Diary studies also allow users to be more open and less likely to modify their thoughts and responses than when someone is watching them. Logging responses as the experience occurs also gives the participant a more intimate, self-discovering relationship with the study.

 Advantages of a diary study

There are various advantages to a diary study:

Cost-effective : Diary studies offer cost savings by being able to perform the studies at the participant’s location without additional expense of travel, moderators, and location rentals.

Habitual responses : Because of the data collection happening over time, respondents can record responses as they happen instead of having to remember what happened earlier in the day.

Behavior in natural environment : Diary studies also allow for testing to occur in a natural environment, that is the place where people use the product, revealing very real and intimate moments of someone’s daily life. 

Disadvantages of a diary study

As with any research, there are pros and cons to the methods. Though diary studies have the advantage of collecting data over a period of time, if the defined time is too lengthy, respondents either forget to complete it or don’t want to commit to the time it takes to do the study for that long. Further disadvantages include: 

Budget for incentives : Incentives for participants may eat into your study cost savings. This is particularly true if the study is lengthy or complex. For you to get a high success rate of completion, incentives will have to correspond to the time spent.

Measuring emotions and behaviors : Recording emotions and behaviors is great for some studies, but you may not get all the data you need without observing the respondents. It’s easy to veer off-course at times when a diary study allows emotional responses without moderation.

Keeping focus on the task: It’s important to keep your study focused on the task in order to get all the information you need without the participants giving answers they think you want. You must design diary studies to not only get complete data but to do so in a way that keeps respondents on point while giving them the opportunity for self-expression.

Bulk of data: You may gather lots of data! That’s great, but that also means lots of analysis. You may have to hire help to analyze the piles of data you receive.

Methodology 

In order for diary studies to be successful, there are some things that you should consider. If you need answers fast, diary studies may not be your method. If you have a short, yes or no study question, a diary study is not what you want. Or if you don’t have the staff or ability to staff for analysis, you may want to try something other than a diary study. But if you want to collect data over time, where the user is, and you want to work through logs for user activities, experiences, and behaviors, a diary study may be for you.  

Who are your participants?

Recruiting participants is an important step in setting up your diary study. Look for engaging, committed respondents. Ask straightforward and to-the-point screener questions. Offer an incentive that correlates to the size and length of the study. If the participant seems disengaged, uninterested, or uncommitted, move on. If your study is lengthy, expect some participants to drop out before it is complete, so recruit a few extras.

Introductions expectations

Once you’ve determined that the participants meet your qualifications, the recruitment process must include information to the participants on the amount of time and commitment that’s required. The best and most effective way is with one-to-one onboarding, where respondents are more likely to ask questions. Be firm about what you expect of participants. Go through the diary, so they are familiar with it, and if digital, check they can access it with their browser. Leave contact information in case issues or questions come up.

Feedback & follow up 

Check in on participants on a regular basis. Ask if they are having problems and if they are currently working on their diary study. Send them reminders. Call them. Whatever works for you. Your respondents are more likely to remain engaged and active if you send friendly reminders or follow-up calls.

You must be clear on what you expect for your diary study. The users should log the specific activities in the time frame you designate. Users should do logging, transmission of data, video, or any other required activities as close to real time as possible.  

You will have to monitor your participants. The amount of monitoring depends on the length and complexity of the study. If you see that a participant isn’t responsive or if you aren’t receiving feedback when requested, spend extra time to determine if the respondent is still active. Remind them a few days before the end of the survey so they can complete the study on time.

Analysis and wrap up

When the diary study is complete, remind participants to return diary study materials in a specified time frame. Participants should know that incentives are paid upon completion, which can help get data submitted.

Have a policy in place for following up on respondents that haven’t returned or finished the study. Determine the best way to follow up, either by phone or email. If someone does not complete the study, try to determine why and find out if there is a way to get them to finish.

Analysis, depending on the size of the study and the size of the sample, can be daunting. Expect to spend some time on analysis before sharing the insights. If there are incomplete or unclear entries, contact the respondent for clarity. Always send a thank you email or call to let the study participants know you appreciate their help.

Setting up your diary study templates can be done in a number of ways. For some smaller studies, you can actually put together a diary and mail it to them. This may work for small, local diary studies, but most people won't want to write everything down and carry the diary with them.  

Then there’s the handwriting! Unclear handwriting can lead you to misread, misinterpret, or disregard diary entries.  

And then there’s the post office. Counting on speedy delivery or even getting respondents to put them in the mailbox just seems to welcome problems.

There is also online access like email, Facebook, or whatever platform your participants may be familiar with. This makes it easier for your users, but retrieving and sorting data can be excruciating.  

You can build your own digital diary study if you’re on a limited budget for research, but some researchers would rather use parameters that have already been defined.

How many participants do you need for a diary study?

While some researchers say 10–15 respondents is optimal, the number of participants depends on the complexity and scope of the study. It’s always a good idea to recruit extra participants in case of drop-outs, particularly in long studies.

How long should a diary study be?

Diary studies can go on for a few days to several months. Each study is different and depends on the data needed and the nature of your study.

What is an example of a diary study method?

You can use diary methods to record user experiences either by using a diary, a video, or online or app-based entries. The user notes their experience, behaviors, and emotions when using a product or service. 

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 21 December 2023

Last updated: 16 December 2023

Last updated: 6 October 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Last updated: 25 November 2023

Last updated: 15 February 2024

Last updated: 11 March 2024

Last updated: 12 December 2023

Last updated: 6 March 2024

Last updated: 10 April 2023

Last updated: 20 December 2023

Latest articles

Related topics, log in or sign up.

Get started for free

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Changing partisan coalitions in a politically divided nation, party identification among registered voters, 1994-2023.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to explore partisan identification among U.S. registered voters across major demographic groups and how voters’ partisan affiliation has shifted over time. It also explores the changing composition of voters overall and the partisan coalitions.

For this analysis, we used annual totals of data from Pew Research Center telephone surveys (1994-2018) and online surveys (2019-2023) among registered voters. All telephone survey data was adjusted to account for differences in how people respond to surveys on the telephone compared with online surveys (refer to Appendix A for details).

All online survey data is from the Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel . The surveys were conducted in both English and Spanish. Each survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology , as well as how Pew Research Center measures many of the demographic categories used in this report .

The contours of the 2024 political landscape are the result of long-standing patterns of partisanship, combined with the profound demographic changes that have reshaped the United States over the past three decades.

Many of the factors long associated with voters’ partisanship remain firmly in place. For decades, gender, race and ethnicity, and religious affiliation have been important dividing lines in politics. This continues to be the case today.

Yet there also have been profound changes – in some cases as a result of demographic change, in others because of dramatic shifts in the partisan allegiances of key groups.

The combined effects of change and continuity have left the country’s two major parties at virtual parity: About half of registered voters (49%) identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 48% identify as Republicans or lean Republican.

In recent decades, neither party has had a sizable advantage, but the Democratic Party has lost the edge it maintained from 2017 to 2021. (Explore this further in Chapter 1 . )

Pew Research Center’s comprehensive analysis of party identification among registered voters – based on hundreds of thousands of interviews conducted over the past three decades – tracks the changes in the country and the parties since 1994. Among the major findings:

The partisan coalitions are increasingly different. Both parties are more racially and ethnically diverse than in the past. However, this has had a far greater impact on the composition of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

The share of voters who are Hispanic has roughly tripled since the mid-1990s; the share who are Asian has increased sixfold over the same period. Today, 44% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, compared with 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners. However, the Democratic Party’s advantages among Black and Hispanic voters, in particular, have narrowed somewhat in recent years. (Explore this further in Chapter 8 .)

Education and partisanship: The share of voters with a four-year bachelor’s degree keeps increasing, reaching 40% in 2023. And the gap in partisanship between voters with and without a college degree continues to grow, especially among White voters. More than six-in-ten White voters who do not have a four-year degree (63%) associate with the Republican Party, which is up substantially over the past 15 years. White college graduates are closely divided; this was not the case in the 1990s and early 2000s, when they mostly aligned with the GOP. (Explore this further in Chapter 2 .)

Beyond the gender gap: By a modest margin, women voters continue to align with the Democratic Party (by 51% to 44%), while nearly the reverse is true among men (52% align with the Republican Party, 46% with the Democratic Party). The gender gap is about as wide among married men and women. The gap is wider among men and women who have never married; while both groups are majority Democratic, 37% of never-married men identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP, compared with 24% of never-married women. (Explore this further in Chapter 3 .)

A divide between old and young: Today, each younger age cohort is somewhat more Democratic-oriented than the one before it. The youngest voters (those ages 18 to 24) align with the Democrats by nearly two-to-one (66% to 34% Republican or lean GOP); majorities of older voters (those in their mid-60s and older) identify as Republicans or lean Republican. While there have been wide age divides in American politics over the last two decades, this wasn’t always the case; in the 1990s there were only very modest age differences in partisanship. (Explore this further in Chapter 4 .)

Education and family income: Voters without a college degree differ substantially by income in their party affiliation. Those with middle, upper-middle and upper family incomes tend to align with the GOP. A majority with lower and lower-middle incomes identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. There are no meaningful differences in partisanship among voters with at least a four-year bachelor’s degree; across income categories, majorities of college graduate voters align with the Democratic Party. (Explore this further in Chapter 6 .)

Rural voters move toward the GOP, while the suburbs remain divided: In 2008, when Barack Obama sought his first term as president, voters in rural counties were evenly split in their partisan loyalties. Today, Republicans hold a 25 percentage point advantage among rural residents (60% to 35%). There has been less change among voters in urban counties, who are mostly Democratic by a nearly identical margin (60% to 37%). The suburbs – perennially a political battleground – remain about evenly divided. (Explore this further in Chapter 7 . )

Growing differences among religious groups: Mirroring movement in the population overall, the share of voters who are religiously unaffiliated has grown dramatically over the past 15 years. These voters, who have long aligned with the Democratic Party, have become even more Democratic over time: Today 70% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. In contrast, Republicans have made gains among several groups of religiously affiliated voters, particularly White Catholics and White evangelical Protestants. White evangelical Protestants now align with the Republican Party by about a 70-point margin (85% to 14%). (Explore this further in Chapter 5 .)

What this report tells us – and what it doesn’t

In most cases, the partisan allegiances of voters do not change a great deal from year to year. Yet as this study shows, the long-term shifts in party identification are substantial and say a great deal about how the country – and its political parties – have changed since the 1990s.

The steadily growing alignment between demographics and partisanship reveals an important aspect of steadily growing partisan polarization. Republicans and Democrats do not just hold different beliefs and opinions about major issues , they are much more different racially, ethnically, geographically and in educational attainment than they used to be.

Yet over this period, there have been only modest shifts in overall partisan identification. Voters remain evenly divided, even as the two parties have grown further apart. The continuing close division in partisan identification among voters is consistent with the relatively narrow margins in the popular votes in most national elections over the past three decades.

Partisan identification provides a broad portrait of voters’ affinities and loyalties. But while it is indicative of voters’ preferences, it does not perfectly predict how people intend to vote in elections, or whether they will vote. In the coming months, Pew Research Center will release reports analyzing voters’ preferences in the presidential election, their engagement with the election and the factors behind candidate support.

Next year, we will release a detailed study of the 2024 election, based on validated voters from the Center’s American Trends Panel. It will examine the demographic composition and vote choices of the 2024 electorate and will provide comparisons to the 2020 and 2016 validated voter studies.

The partisan identification study is based on annual totals from surveys conducted on the Center’s American Trends Panel from 2019 to 2023 and telephone surveys conducted from 1994 to 2018. The survey data was adjusted to account for differences in how the surveys were conducted. For more information, refer to Appendix A .

Previous Pew Research Center analyses of voters’ party identification relied on telephone survey data. This report, for the first time, combines data collected in telephone surveys with data from online surveys conducted on the Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel.

Directly comparing answers from online and telephone surveys is complex because there are differences in how questions are asked of respondents and in how respondents answer those questions. Together these differences are known as “mode effects.”

As a result of mode effects, it was necessary to adjust telephone trends for leaned party identification in order to allow for direct comparisons over time.

In this report, telephone survey data from 1994 to 2018 is adjusted to align it with online survey responses. In 2014, Pew Research Center randomly assigned respondents to answer a survey by telephone or online. The party identification data from this survey was used to calculate an adjustment for differences between survey mode, which is applied to all telephone survey data in this report.

Please refer to Appendix A for more details.

Add Pew Research Center to your Alexa

Say “Alexa, enable the Pew Research Center flash briefing”

Report Materials

Table of contents, behind biden’s 2020 victory, a voter data resource: detailed demographic tables about verified voters in 2016, 2018, what the 2020 electorate looks like by party, race and ethnicity, age, education and religion, interactive map: the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the u.s. electorate, in changing u.s. electorate, race and education remain stark dividing lines, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

• See us on facebook
• See us on twitter
• See us on youtube
• See us on linkedin
• See us on instagram

AI improves accuracy of skin cancer diagnoses in Stanford Medicine-led study

Artificial intelligence algorithms powered by deep learning improve skin cancer diagnostic accuracy for doctors, nurse practitioners and medical students in a study led by the Stanford Center for Digital Health.

April 11, 2024 - By Krista Conger

Artificial intelligence helped clinicians diagnose skin cancer more accurately, a Stanford Medicine-led study found. Chanelle Malambo/peopleimages.com   -  stock.adobe.com

A new study led by researchers at Stanford Medicine finds that computer algorithms powered by artificial intelligence based on deep learning can help health care practitioners to diagnose skin cancers more accurately. Even dermatologists benefit from AI guidance, although their improvement is less than that seen for non-dermatologists.

“This is a clear demonstration of how AI can be used in collaboration with a physician to improve patient care,” said professor of dermatology and of epidemiology Eleni Linos , MD. Linos leads the Stanford Center for Digital Health , which was launched to tackle some of the most pressing research questions at the intersection of technology and health by promoting collaboration between engineering, computer science, medicine and the humanities.

Linos, associate dean of research and the Ben Davenport and Lucy Zhang Professor in Medicine, is the senior author of the study , which was published on April 9 in npj Digital Medicine . Postdoctoral scholar Jiyeong Kim , PhD, and visiting researcher Isabelle Krakowski, MD, are the lead authors of the research.

“Previous studies have focused on how AI performs when compared with physicians,” Kim said. “Our study compared physicians working without AI assistance with physicians using AI when diagnosing skin cancers.”

AI algorithms are increasingly used in clinical settings, including dermatology. They are created by feeding a computer hundreds of thousands or even millions of images of skin conditions labeled with information such as diagnosis and patient outcome. Through a process called deep learning, the computer eventually learns to recognize telltale patterns in the images that correlate with specific skin diseases including cancers. Once trained, an algorithm written by the computer can be used to suggest possible diagnoses based on an image of a patient’s skin that it has not been exposed to.

Eleni Linos

These diagnostic algorithms aren’t used alone, however. They are overseen by clinicians who also assess the patient, come to their own conclusions about a patient’s diagnosis and choose whether to accept the algorithm’s suggestion.

An accuracy boost

Kim and Linos’ team reviewed 12 studies detailing more than 67,000 evaluations of potential skin cancers by a variety of practitioners with and without AI assistance. They found that, overall, health care practitioners working without aid from artificial intelligence were able to accurately diagnose about 75% of people with skin cancer — a statistical measurement known as sensitivity. Conversely, the workers correctly diagnosed about 81.5% of people with cancer-like skin conditions but who did not have cancer — a companion measurement known as specificity.

Health care practitiones who used AI to guide their diagnoses did better. Their diagnoses were about 81.1% sensitive and 86.1% specific. The improvement may seem small, but the differences are critical for people told they don’t have cancer, but do, or for those who do have cancer but are told they are healthy.

When the researchers split the health care practitioners by specialty or level of training, they saw that medical students, nurse practitioners and primary care doctors benefited the most from AI guidance — improving on average about 13 points in sensitivity and 11 points in specificity. Dermatologists and dermatology residents performed better overall, but the sensitivity and specificity of their diagnoses also improved with AI.

“I was surprised to see everyone’s accuracy improve with AI assistance, regardless of their level of training,” Linos said. “This makes me very optimistic about the use of AI in clinical care. Soon our patients will not just be accepting, but expecting, that we use AI assistance to provide them with the best possible care.”

Jiyeong Kim

Researchers at the Stanford Center for Digital Health, including Kim, are interested in learning more about the promise of and barriers to integrating AI-based tools into health care. In particular, they are planning to investigate how the perceptions and attitudes of physicians and patients to AI will influence its implementation.

“We want to better understand how humans interact with and use AI to make clinical decisions,” Kim said. 

Previous studies have indicated that a clinician’s degree of confidence in their own clinical decision, the degree of confidence of the AI, and whether the clinician and the AI agree on the diagnosis all influence whether the clinician incorporates the algorithm’s advice when making clinical decisions for a patient.

Medical specialties like dermatology and radiology, which rely heavily on images — visual inspection, pictures, X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, among others — for diagnoses are low-hanging fruit for computers that can pick out levels of detail beyond what a human eye (or brain) can reasonably process. But even other more symptom-based specialties, or prediction modeling, are likely to benefit from AI intervention, Linos and Kim feel. And it’s not just patients who stand to benefit.

“If this technology can simultaneously improve a doctor’s diagnostic accuracy and save them time, it’s really a win-win. In addition to helping patients, it could help reduce physician burnout and improve the human interpersonal relationships between doctors and their patients,” Linos said. “I have no doubt that AI assistance will eventually be used in all medical specialties. The key question is how we make sure it is used in a way that helps all patients regardless of their background and simultaneously supports physician well-being.”

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute, the Karolinska University Hospital and the University of Nicosia contributed to the research.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants K24AR075060 and R01AR082109), Radiumhemmet Research, the Swedish Cancer Society and the Swedish Research Council.

For more news about responsible AI in health and medicine,  sign up  for the RAISE Health newsletter.

Register  for the RAISE Health Symposium on May 14.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Artificial intelligence

Exploring ways AI is applied to health care

Prestigious cancer research institute has retracted 7 studies amid controversy over errors

Seven studies from researchers at the prestigious Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been retracted over the last two months after a scientist blogger alleged that images used in them had been manipulated or duplicated.

The retractions are the latest development in a monthslong controversy around research at the Boston-based institute, which is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. 

The issue came to light after Sholto David, a microbiologist and volunteer science sleuth based in Wales, published a scathing post on his blog in January, alleging errors and manipulations of images across dozens of papers produced primarily by Dana-Farber researchers . The institute acknowledged errors and subsequently announced that it had requested six studies to be retracted and asked for corrections in 31 more papers. Dana-Farber also said, however, that a review process for errors had been underway before David’s post. 

Now, at least one more study has been retracted than Dana-Farber initially indicated, and David said he has discovered an additional 30 studies from authors affiliated with the institute that he believes contain errors or image manipulations and therefore deserve scrutiny.

The episode has imperiled the reputation of a major cancer research institute and raised questions about one high-profile researcher there, Kenneth Anderson, who is a senior author on six of the seven retracted studies. 

Anderson is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber. He did not respond to multiple emails or voicemails requesting comment. 

The retractions and new allegations add to a larger, ongoing debate in science about how to protect scientific integrity and reduce the incentives that could lead to misconduct or unintentional mistakes in research. 

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has moved relatively swiftly to seek retractions and corrections. 

“Dana-Farber is deeply committed to a culture of accountability and integrity, and as an academic research and clinical care organization we also prioritize transparency,” Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institute’s integrity research officer, said in a statement. “However, we are bound by federal regulations that apply to all academic medical centers funded by the National Institutes of Health among other federal agencies. Therefore, we cannot share details of internal review processes and will not comment on personnel issues.”

The retracted studies were originally published in two journals: One in the Journal of Immunology and six in Cancer Research. Six of the seven focused on multiple myeloma, a form of cancer that develops in plasma cells. Retraction notices indicate that Anderson agreed to the retractions of the papers he authored.

Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and longtime image sleuth, reviewed several of the papers’ retraction statements and scientific images for NBC News and said the errors were serious. 

“The ones I’m looking at all have duplicated elements in the photos, where the photo itself has been manipulated,” she said, adding that these elements were “signs of misconduct.” 

Dr.  John Chute, who directs the division of hematology and cellular therapy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and has contributed to studies about multiple myeloma, said the papers were produced by pioneers in the field, including Anderson. 

“These are people I admire and respect,” he said. “Those were all high-impact papers, meaning they’re highly read and highly cited. By definition, they have had a broad impact on the field.” 

Chute said he did not know the authors personally but had followed their work for a long time.

“Those investigators are some of the leading people in the field of myeloma research and they have paved the way in terms of understanding our biology of the disease,” he said. “The papers they publish lead to all kinds of additional work in that direction. People follow those leads and industry pays attention to that stuff and drug development follows.”

The retractions offer additional evidence for what some science sleuths have been saying for years: The more you look for errors or image manipulation, the more you might find, even at the top levels of science. 

Scientific images in papers are typically used to present evidence of an experiment’s results. Commonly, they show cells or mice; other types of images show key findings like western blots — a laboratory method that identifies proteins — or bands of separated DNA molecules in gels. 

Science sleuths sometimes examine these images for irregular patterns that could indicate errors, duplications or manipulations. Some artificial intelligence companies are training computers to spot these kinds of problems, as well. 

Duplicated images could be a sign of sloppy lab work or data practices. Manipulated images — in which a researcher has modified an image heavily with photo editing tools — could indicate that images have been exaggerated, enhanced or altered in an unethical way that could change how other scientists interpret a study’s findings or scientific meaning. 

Top scientists at big research institutions often run sprawling laboratories with lots of junior scientists. Critics of science research and publishing systems allege that a lack of opportunities for young scientists, limited oversight and pressure to publish splashy papers that can advance careers could incentivize misconduct. 

These critics, along with many science sleuths, allege that errors or sloppiness are too common , that research organizations and authors often ignore concerns when they’re identified, and that the path from complaint to correction is sluggish. 

“When you look at the amount of retractions and poor peer review in research today, the question is, what has happened to the quality standards we used to think existed in research?” said Nick Steneck, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on science integrity.

David told NBC News that he had shared some, but not all, of his concerns about additional image issues with Dana-Farber. He added that he had not identified any problems in four of the seven studies that have been retracted. 

“It’s good they’ve picked up stuff that wasn’t in the list,” he said. 

NBC News requested an updated tally of retractions and corrections, but Ellen Berlin, a spokeswoman for Dana-Farber, declined to provide a new list. She said that the numbers could shift and that the institute did not have control over the form, format or timing of corrections. 

“Any tally we give you today might be different tomorrow and will likely be different a week from now or a month from now,” Berlin said. “The point of sharing numbers with the public weeks ago was to make clear to the public that Dana-Farber had taken swift and decisive action with regard to the articles for which a Dana-Farber faculty member was primary author.” 

She added that Dana-Farber was encouraging journals to correct the scientific record as promptly as possible. 

Bik said it was unusual to see a highly regarded U.S. institution have multiple papers retracted. 

“I don’t think I’ve seen many of those,” she said. “In this case, there was a lot of public attention to it and it seems like they’re responding very quickly. It’s unusual, but how it should be.”

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at [email protected].

New study sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the development of malignant pediatric brain tumors

A new study conducted by researchers at Tampere University and Tampere University Hospital revealed how aberrant epigenetic regulation contributes to the development of atypical teratoid/rhabdoid (AT/RT) tumours, which are aggressive brain tumours that mainly affect young children. There is an urgent need for more research in this area as current treatment options are ineffective against these highly malignant tumours.

Most tumours take a long time to develop as harmful mutations gradually accumulate in cells' DNA over time. AT/RT tumours are a rare exception, because the inactivation of one gene gives rise to this highly aggressive form of brain cancer.

AT/RT tumours are rare central nervous system embryonic tumours that predominantly affect infants and young children. On average, 73 people are diagnosed with AT/RT in the USA each year. However, AT/RT is the most common central nervous system tumour in children under one years old and accounts for 40-50% of diagnoses in this age group. The prognosis for AT/RT patients is grim, with a postoperative median survival of only 11-24 months.

The collaborative study conducted by Tampere University and Tampere University Hospital examined how aberrant DNA methylation distorts cellular developmental trajectories and thereby contributes to the formation of AT/RT. DNA methylation is a process whereby methyl groups are added to the DNA strand. DNA methylation is one of the mechanisms that cells use to control gene expression, and methylation patterns change during normal brain development.

The new study showed that DNA methylation interferes with the activity of multiple regulators, which under normal circumstances regulate the differentiation and maturation of central nervous system cells during brain development. Disrupted cell differentiation promotes the abnormal, uncontrolled proliferation of cells that eventually form a tumour.

The study also found several genes that regulate cell differentiation or inhibit tumour development and are silenced in AT/RT together with increased DNA methylation. The findings will pave the way for a more detailed understanding of the epigenetic dysregulation mechanisms in AT/RT pathogenesis and enable researchers to identify which genes contribute to the malignant progression of the tumour.

"These results will provide deeper insights into the development of AT/RTs and their malignancy. In the future, the results will help to accelerate the discovery of new treatments for this aggressive brain tumour," says Docent Kirsi Rautajoki from Tampere University.

At Tampere University, the research was mainly carried out by the research groups led by Kirsi Rautajoki and Professor Matti Nykter. The key partners from Tampere University Hospital included paediatrician, LM Kristiina Nordfors, neurosurgeon and Docent Joonas Haapasalo and neuropathologist and Docent Hannu Haapasalo.

• Brain Tumor
• Human Biology
• Child Development
• Intelligence
• Learning Disorders
• Brain Injury
• Esophageal cancer
• Brain tumor
• Positron emission tomography
• Psycholinguistics
• Bitemporal hemianopsia

Story Source:

Materials provided by Tampere University . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Meeri Pekkarinen, Kristiina Nordfors, Joonas Uusi-Mäkelä, Ville Kytölä, Anja Hartewig, Laura Huhtala, Minna Rauhala, Henna Urhonen, Sergei Häyrynen, Ebrahim Afyounian, Olli Yli-Harja, Wei Zhang, Pauli Helen, Olli Lohi, Hannu Haapasalo, Joonas Haapasalo, Matti Nykter, Juha Kesseli, Kirsi J Rautajoki. Aberrant DNA methylation distorts developmental trajectories in atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors . Life Science Alliance , 2024; 7 (6): e202302088 DOI: 10.26508/lsa.202302088

Cite This Page :

Explore More

• Plastic Pollution Kills Ocean Embryos
• Most Massive Stellar Black Hole in Our Galaxy
• Coffee's Prehistoric Origin and It's Future
• Can Animals Count? New Rat Study
• A Single Atom Layer of Gold: Goldene
• Fool's Gold May Contain Valuable Lithium
• Exercise Cuts Stress-Related Brain Activity
• Microplastics Go from Gut to Other Organs
• Epilepsy Drug May Prevent Brain Tumors
• Evolution's Recipe Book

Trending Topics

Strange & offbeat.

This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 16.4.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

User-Centered Development of a Patient Decision Aid for Choice of Early Abortion Method: Multi-Cycle Mixed Methods Study

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Kate J Wahl 1 , MSc   ; 
• Melissa Brooks 2 , MD   ; 
• Logan Trenaman 3 , PhD   ; 
• Kirsten Desjardins-Lorimer 4 , MD   ; 
• Carolyn M Bell 4 , MD   ; 
• Nazgul Chokmorova 4 , MD   ; 
• Romy Segall 2 , BSc, MD   ; 
• Janelle Syring 4 , MD   ; 
• Aleyah Williams 1 , MPH   ; 
• Linda C Li 5 , PhD   ; 
• Wendy V Norman 4, 6 * , MD, MHSc   ; 
• Sarah Munro 1, 3 * , PhD  

1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

2 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

3 Department of Health Systems and Population Health, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

4 Department of Family Practice, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

5 Department of Physical Therapy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

6 Department of Public Health, Environments and Society, Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

*these authors contributed equally

Corresponding Author:

Kate J Wahl, MSc

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

University of British Columbia

4500 Oak Street

Vancouver, BC, V6H 3N1

Phone: 1 4165231923

Email: [email protected]

Background: People seeking abortion in early pregnancy have the choice between medication and procedural options for care. The choice is preference-sensitive—there is no clinically superior option and the choice depends on what matters most to the individual patient. Patient decision aids (PtDAs) are shared decision-making tools that support people in making informed, values-aligned health care choices.

Objective: We aimed to develop and evaluate the usability of a web-based PtDA for the Canadian context, where abortion care is publicly funded and available without legal restriction.

Methods: We used a systematic, user-centered design approach guided by principles of integrated knowledge translation. We first developed a prototype using available evidence for abortion seekers’ decisional needs and the risks, benefits, and consequences of each option. We then refined the prototype through think-aloud interviews with participants at risk of unintended pregnancy (“patient” participants). Interviews were audio-recorded and documented through field notes. Finally, we conducted a web-based survey of patients and health care professionals involved with abortion care, which included the System Usability Scale. We used content analysis to identify usability issues described in the field notes and open-ended survey questions, and descriptive statistics to summarize participant characteristics and close-ended survey responses.

Results: A total of 61 individuals participated in this study. Further, 11 patients participated in think-aloud interviews. Overall, the response to the PtDA was positive; however, the content analysis identified issues related to the design, language, and information about the process and experience of obtaining abortion care. In response, we adapted the PtDA into an interactive website and revised it to include consistent and plain language, additional information (eg, pain experience narratives), and links to additional resources on how to find an abortion health care professional. In total, 25 patients and 25 health care professionals completed the survey. The mean System Usability Scale score met the threshold for good usability among both patient and health care professional participants. Most participants felt that the PtDA was user-friendly (patients: n=25, 100%; health care professionals: n=22, 88%), was not missing information (patients: n=21, 84%; health care professionals: n=18, 72%), and that it was appropriate for patients to complete the PtDA before a consultation (patients: n=23, 92%; health care professionals: n=23, 92%). Open-ended responses focused on improving usability by reducing the length of the PtDA and making the website more mobile-friendly.

Conclusions: We systematically designed the PtDA to address an unmet need to support informed, values-aligned decision-making about the method of abortion. The design process responded to a need identified by potential users and addressed unique sensitivities related to reproductive health decision-making.

Introduction

In total, 1 in 3 pregnancy-capable people in Canada will have an abortion in their lifetimes, and most will seek care early in pregnancy [ 1 ]. Medication abortion (using the gold-standard mifepristone/misoprostol regimen) and procedural abortion are common, safe, and effective options for abortion care in the first trimester [ 2 , 3 ]. The choice between using medications and presenting to a facility for a procedure is a preference-sensitive decision; there is no clinically superior option and the choice depends on what matters most to the individual patient regarding the respective treatments and the features of those options [ 4 - 6 ].

The choice of method of abortion can involve a process of shared decision-making, in which the patient and health care professional share the best available evidence about options, and the patient is supported to consider those options and clarify an informed preference [ 7 ]. There are many types of interventions available to support shared decision-making, including interventions targeting health care professionals (eg, educational materials, meetings, outreach visits, audit and feedback, and reminders) and patients (eg, patient decision aids [PtDA], appointment preparation packages, empowerment sessions, printed materials, and shared decision-making education) [ 8 ]. Of these interventions, PtDAs are well-suited to address challenges to shared decision-making about the method of abortion, including limited patient knowledge, public misinformation about options, poor access to health care professionals with sufficient expertise, and apprehension about abortion counseling [ 9 ].

PtDAs are widely used interventions that support people in making informed, deliberate health care choices by explicitly describing the health problem and decision, providing information about each option, and clarifying patient values [ 10 ]. The results of the 2023 Cochrane systematic review of 209 randomized controlled trials indicate that, compared to usual care (eg, information pamphlets or webpages), the use of PtDAs results in increases in patient knowledge, expectations of benefits and harms, clarity about what matters most to them, and participation in making a decision [ 11 ]. Of the studies included in the systematic review, 1 tested the effect of a PtDA leaflet for method of abortion and found that patients eligible for both medication and procedural abortion who received the PtDA were more knowledgeable, and had lower risk perceptions and decisional conflict than those who were in the control group [ 12 ]. However, that PtDA was developed 20 years ago in the UK health system and was not publicly available. A recent environmental scan of PtDAs for a method of abortion found that other available options meet few of the criteria set by the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) collaboration and do not include language and content optimized for end users [ 9 , 13 ].

Consequently, no PtDAs for method of abortion were available in Canada at the time of this study. This was a critical gap for both patients and health care professionals as, in 2017, mifepristone/misoprostol medication abortion came to the market, offering a new method of choice for people seeking abortion in the first trimester [ 14 ]. Unlike most jurisdictions, in Canada medication abortion is typically prescribed in primary care and dispensed in community pharmacies. Offering a PtDA in preparation for a brief primary care consultation allows the person seeking abortion more time to digest new information, consider their preferences, be ready to discuss their options, and make a quality decision.

In this context, we identified a need for a high-quality and publicly available PtDA to support people in making an informed choice about the method of abortion that reflects what is most important to them. Concurrently, our team was working in collaboration with knowledge users (health care professionals, patients, and health system decision makers) who were part of a larger project to investigate the implementation of mifepristone in Canada [ 15 , 16 ]. We, therefore, aimed to develop and evaluate the usability of a web-based PtDA for the Canadian context, where abortion care is publicly funded and available without legal restriction.

Study Design

We performed a mixed methods user-centered development and evaluation study informed by principles of integrated knowledge translation. Integrated knowledge translation is an approach to collaborative research in which researchers and knowledge users work together to identify a problem, conduct research as equal partners to address that problem, and coproduce research products that aim to impact health service delivery [ 17 ]. We selected this approach to increase the likelihood that our end PtDAs would be relevant, useable, and used for patients and health care professionals in Canada [ 17 ]. The need for a PtDA was identified through engagement with health care professionals. In 2017, they highlighted the need for patients to be supported in choosing between procedural care—which historically represented more than 90% of abortions in Canada [ 18 ]—and the newly available medication option [ 19 , 20 ]. This need was reaffirmed in 2022 by the Canadian federal health agency, Health Canada, which circulated a request for proposals to generate “evidence-based, culturally-relevant information aimed at supporting people in their reproductive decision-making and in accessing abortion services as needed” [ 21 ].

We operationalized integrated knowledge translation principles in a user-centered design process. User-centered design “grounds the characteristics of an innovation in information about the individuals who use that innovation, with a goal of maximizing ‘usability in context’” [ 22 ]. In PtDA development, user-centered design involves iteratively understanding users, developing and refining a prototype, and observing user interaction with the prototype [ 23 , 24 ]. Like integrated knowledge translation, this approach is predicated on the assumption that involving users throughout the process increases the relevance of the PtDA and the likelihood of successful implementation [ 24 ].

Our design process included the following steps ( Figure 1 ): identification of evidence about abortion patients’ decisional needs and the attributes of medication and procedural abortion that matter most from a patient perspective; development of a paper-based prototype; usability testing via think-aloud interviews with potential end users; refinement of the PtDA prototype into an interactive website; usability testing via a survey with potential end users and abortion health care professionals; and final revisions before launching the PtDA for real-world testing. Our systematic process was informed by user-centered methods for PtDA development [ 23 , 24 ], guidance from the IPDAS collaboration [ 25 - 27 ], and the Standards for Universal Reporting of Patient Decision Aid Evaluation checklist [ 10 ].

Our multidisciplinary team included experts in shared decision-making (SM and LT), a PhD student in patient-oriented knowledge translation (KJW), experts in integrated knowledge translation with health care professionals and policy makers (WVN and SM), clinical experts in abortion counseling and care (WVN and MB), a medical undergraduate student (RS), a research project coordinator (AW), and family medicine residents (KD-L, CMB, NC, and JS) who had an interest in abortion care. Additionally, a panel of experts external to the development process reviewed the PtDA for clinical accuracy following each revision of the prototype. These experts included coauthors of the national Society for Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) clinical practice guidelines for abortion care in Canada. They were invited to this project because of their knowledge of first-trimester abortion care as well as their ability to support the implementation of the PtDA in guidelines and routine clinical practice.

Ethical Considerations

The research was approved by the University of British Columbia Children’s and Women’s Research Ethics Board (H16-01006) and the Nova Scotia Health Research Ethics Board (1027637). In each round of testing, participants received a CAD $20 (US $14.75) Amazon gift card by email for their participation.

Preliminary Work: Identification of Evidence

We identified the decisional needs of people seeking early abortion care using a 2018 systematic review of reasons for choosing an abortion method [ 28 ], an additional search that identified 1 study conducted in Canada following the 2017 availability of mifepristone/misoprostol medication abortion [ 29 ], and the SOGC clinical practice guidelines [ 2 , 3 ]. The review identified several key factors that matter most for patient choice of early abortion method: perceived simplicity and “naturalness,” fear of complication or bleeding , fear of anesthesia or surgery , timing of the procedure , and chance of sedation . The additional Canadian study found that the time required to complete the abortion and side effects were important factors. According to the SOGC clinical practice guidelines, the key information that should be communicated to the patient are gestational age limits and the risk of complications with increasing gestational age [ 2 , 3 ]. The guidelines also indicate that wait times , travel times , and cost considerations may be important in a person’s choice of abortion method and should be addressed [ 2 , 3 ].

We compiled a long list of attributes for our expert panel and then consolidated and refined the attribute list through each stage of the prototype evaluation. For evidence of how these factors differed for medication and procedural abortion, we drew primarily from the SOGC clinical practice guidelines for abortion [ 2 , 3 ]. For cost considerations, we described the range of federal, provincial, and population-specific programs that provide free coverage of abortion care for people in Canada.

Step 1: Developing the Prototype

Our goal was to produce an interactive, web-based PtDA that would be widely accessible to people seeking an abortion in Canada by leveraging the widespread use of digital health information, especially among reproductive-aged people [ 30 ]. Our first prototype was based on a previously identified paper-based question-and-answer comparison grid that presented evidence-based information about the medication and procedural options [ 9 , 31 ]. We calculated readability by inputting the plain text of the paper-based prototype into a Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Index calculator [ 32 ].

We made 2 intentional deviations from common practices in PtDA development [ 33 ]. First, we did not include an “opt-out” or “do nothing” option, which would describe the natural course of pregnancy. We chose to exclude this option to ensure clarity for users regarding the decision point; specifically, our decision point of interest was the method of abortion, not the choice to terminate or continue a pregnancy. Second, we characterized attributes of the options as key points rather than positive and negative features to avoid imposing value judgments onto subjective features (eg, having the abortion take place at home may be beneficial for some people but may be a deterrent for others).

Step 2: Usability Testing of the Prototype

We first conducted usability testing involving think-aloud interviews with patient participants to assess the paper-based prototype. Inclusion criteria included people aged 18-49 years assigned-female-at-birth who resided in Canada and could speak and read English. In January 2020, we recruited participants for the first round of think-aloud interviews [ 34 ] via email and poster advertising circulated to (1) a network of parent research advisors who were convened to guide a broader program of research about pregnancy and childbirth in British Columbia, Canada, and (2) a clinic providing surgical abortion care in Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as snowball sampling with participants. We purposively sought to advertise this study with these populations to ensure variation in age, ethnicity, level of education, parity, and abortion experience. Interested individuals reviewed this study information form and provided consent to participate, before scheduling an interview. The interviewer asked participants to think aloud as they navigated the prototype, for example describing what they liked or disliked, missing information, or lack of clarity. The interviewer noted the participant’s feedback on a copy of the prototype during the interview. Finally, the participant responded to questions adapted from the System Usability Scale [ 35 ], a measure designed to collect subjective ratings of a product’s usability, and completed a brief demographic questionnaire. The interviews were conducted via videoconferencing and were audio recorded. We deidentified the qualitative data and assigned each participant a unique identifier. Then, the interviewer listened to the recording and revised their field notes with additional information including relevant quotes.

For the analysis of think-aloud interviews, we used inductive content analysis to describe the usability and acceptability of different elements of the PtDA [ 36 ]. Further, 3 family medicine residents (KD-L, CMB, and NC) under guidance from a senior coauthor (SM) completed open coding to develop a list of initial categories, which we grouped under higher-order headings. We then organized these results in a table to illustrate usability issues (categories), illustrative participant quotes, and modifications to make. We then used the results of interviews to adapt the prototype into a web-based format, which we tested via further think-aloud interviews and a survey with people capable of becoming pregnant and health care professionals involved with abortion care.

Step 3: Usability Testing of the Website

For the web-based format, we used DecideApp PtDA open-source software, which provides a sustainable solution to the problems of low quality and high maintenance costs faced by web-based PtDAs by allowing developers to host, maintain, and update their tools at no cost. This software has been user-tested and can be accessed by phone, tablet, or computer [ 37 , 38 ]. It organizes a PtDA into 6 sections: Introduction, About Me, My Values, My Choice, Review, and Next Steps. In the My Values section, an interactive values clarification exercise allows users to rank and make trade-offs between attributes of the options. The final pages provide an opportunity for users to make a choice, complete a knowledge self-assessment, and consider the next steps to access their chosen method.

From July to August 2020, we recruited patient and health care professional participants using Twitter and the email list of the Canadian Abortion Providers Support platform, respectively. Participants received an email with a link to the PtDA and were redirected to the survey once they had navigated through the PtDA. As above, inclusion criteria included people aged 18-49 years assigned as female-at-birth who resided in Canada. Among health care professionals, we included eligible prescribers who may not have previously engaged in abortion care (family physicians, residents, nurse practitioners, and midwives), and allied health professionals and stakeholders who provide or support abortion care, who practiced in Canada. All participants had to speak and read English.

The survey included 3 sections: usability, implementation, and participant characteristics. The usability section consisted of the System Usability Scale [ 35 ], and purpose-built questions about what participants liked and disliked about the PtDA. The implementation section included open- and close-ended questions about how the PtDA compares to other resources and when it could be implemented in the care pathway. Patient participants also completed the Control Preference Scale, a validated measure used to determine their preferred role in decision-making (active, collaborative, or passive) [ 39 ]. Data on participant characteristics included gender, abortion experience (patient participants), and abortion practice (health care professional participants). We deidentified the qualitative data and assigned each participant a unique identifier. For the analysis of survey data, we characterized close-ended responses using descriptive statistics, and, following the analysis procedures described in Step 2 in the Methods section, used inductive content analysis of open-ended responses to generate categories associated with usability and implementation [ 36 ]. In 2021, we made minor revisions to the website based on the results of usability testing and published the PtDA for use in routine clinical care.

In the following sections, we outline the results of the development process including the results of the think-aloud interviews and survey, as well as the final decision aid prototype.

Our initial prototype, a paper-based question-and-answer comparison grid, presented evidence-based information comparing medication and procedural abortion. The first version of the prototype also included a second medication abortion regimen involving off-label use of methotrexate, however, we removed this option following a review by the clinical expert panel who advised us that there is very infrequent use of this regimen in Canada in comparison to the gold standard medication abortion option, mifepristone. Other changes at this stage involved clarifying the scope of practice (health care professionals other than gynecologists can perform a procedural abortion), abortion practice (gestational age limit and how the medication is taken), the abortion experience (what to expect in terms of bleeding), and risk (removing information about second- and third-trimester abortion). The updated prototype was finalized by a scientist (SM) and trainee (KJW) with expertise in PtDA development. The prototype (see Multimedia Appendix 1 ) was ultimately 4 pages long and described 18 attributes of each option framed as Frequently Asked Questions, including abortion eligibility (How far along in pregnancy can I be?), duration (How long does it take?), and side effects (How much will I bleed?). The SMOG grade level was 8.4.

Participant Characteristics

We included 11 participants in think-aloud interviews between January and July 2020, including 7 recruited through a parent research advisory network and 4 individuals who had recently attended an abortion clinic. The mean interview duration was 36 minutes (SD 6 minutes). The participants ranged in age from 31 to 37 years. All had been pregnant and 8 out of 11 (73%) participants had a personal experience of abortion (4 participants who had recently attended an abortion clinic and 4 participants from the parent research advisory who disclosed their experience during the interview). The characteristics of the sample are reported in Table 1 .

Overall, participants had a positive view of the paper-based, comparison grid PtDA. In total, 1 participant who had recently sought an abortion said, “I think this is great and super helpful. It would’ve been awesome to have had access to this right away … I don’t think there’s really anything missing from here that I was Googling about” (DA010). The only participant who expressed antichoice views indicated that the PtDA would be helpful to someone seeking to terminate a pregnancy (DA001). Another participant said, “[The PtDA] is not biased, it’s not like you’re going to die. It’s a fact, you know the facts and then you decide whether you want it or not. A lot of people feel it’s so shameful and judgmental, but this is very straightforward. I like it.” (DA002). Several participants stated they felt more informed and knowledgeable about the options.

In response to questions adapted from the System Usability Scale, all 11 participants agreed that the PtDA was easy to use, that most people could learn to use it quickly, and that they felt very confident using the prototype, and disagreed that it was awkward to use. In total, 8 (73%) participants agreed with the statement that the components of the PtDA were well-integrated. A majority of participants disagreed with the statements that the website was unnecessarily complex (n=8, 73%), that they would need the support of an expert to use it (n=8, 73%), that it was too inconsistent (n=9, 82%), and that they would need to learn a lot before using it (n=8, 73%). Further, 2 (18%) participants agreed with the statements that the PtDA was unnecessarily complex and that they would need to learn a lot before using it. Furthermore, 1 (9%) participant agreed with the statement that the PtDA was too inconsistent.

Through inductive analysis of think-aloud interviews, we identified 4 key usability categories: design, language, process, and experience.

Participants liked the side-by-side comparison layout, appreciated the summary of key points to remember, and said that overall, the presented information was clear. For example, 1 participant reflected, “I think it’s very clear ... it’s very simplistic, people will understand the left-hand column is for medical abortion and the right-hand column is for surgical.” (DA005) Some participants raised concerns about the aesthetics of the PtDA, difficulties recalling the headers across multiple pages, and the overall length of the PtDA.

Participants sought to clarify language at several points in the PtDA. Common feedback was that the gestational age limit for the medication and the procedure should be clarified. Participants also pointed out inconsistent use of language (eg, doctor and health care professional) and medical jargon.

Several participants were surprised to learn that family doctors could provide abortion care. Others noted that information about the duration—including travel time—and number of appointments for both medication and procedural abortion could be improved. In addition to clarifying the abortion process, several participants suggested including additional information and resources to help identify an abortion health care professional, understand when to seek help for abortion-related complications, and access emotional support. It was also important to participants that financial impacts (eg, hospital parking and menstrual pads) were included for each option.

Participants provided insight into the description of the physical, psychological, and other consequences associated with the abortion medication and procedure. Participants who had both types of abortion care felt that the description of pain that “may be worse than a period” was inaccurate. Other participants indicated that information about perceived and real risks was distressing or felt out of place, such as correcting myths about future fertility or breast cancer. Some participants indicated that patient stories would be valuable saying, for example, “I think what might be nice to help with the decision-making process is reading stories of people’s experiences” (DA006).

Modifications Made

Changes made based on these findings are described in Table 2 . Key user-centered modifications included transitioning to a web-based format with a consistent color scheme, clarifying who the PtDA is for (for typical pregnancies up to 10 weeks), adding information about telemedicine to reflect guidelines for the provision of abortion during pandemics, and developing brief first-person qualitative descriptions of the pain intensity for each option.

Through analysis of the interviews and consultation with our panel of clinical experts, we also identified that, among the 18 initial attributes in our prototype, 7 had the most relative importance to patients in choosing between medication and procedural abortion. These attributes also represented important differences between each option which forced participants to consider the trade-offs they were willing to make. Thus we moved all other potential attributes into an information section (My Options) that supported the user to gain knowledge before clarifying what mattered most to them by considering the differences between options (My Values).

a PtDA: patient decision aid.

b SOGC: Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Description of the PtDA

As shown in Figure 2 , the revised version of the PtDA resulting from our systematic process is an interactive website. Initially, the title was My Body, My Choice ; however, this was changed to avoid association with antivaccine campaigns that co-opted this reproductive rights slogan. The new title, It’s My Choice or C’est Mon Choix , was selected for its easy use in English and French. The PtDA leads the user through 6 sections:

• The Introduction section provides the user with information about the decision and the PtDA, as well as grids comparing positive and negative features of the abortion pill and procedure, including their chance of benefits (eg, effectiveness), harms (eg, complications), and other relevant factors (eg, number of appointments and cost).
• The About Me section asks the user to identify any contraindications to the methods. It then prompts users to consider their privacy needs and gives examples of how this relates to each option (eg, the abortion pill can be explained to others as a miscarriage; procedural care can be completed quickly).
• The My Values section includes a values clarification exercise, in which the user selects and weights (on a 0-100 scale) the relative importance of at least three of 7 decisional attributes: avoiding pain, avoiding bleeding, having the abortion at home, having an experience that feels like a miscarriage, having fewer appointments, less time off for recovery, and having a companion during the abortion.
• The My Choice section highlights 1 option, based on the attribute weights the user assigned in the My Values section. For instance, if a user strongly preferred to avoid bleeding and have fewer appointments, the software would suggest that a procedural abortion would be a better match. For a user who preferred having the abortion at home and having a companion present, the software would suggest that a medication abortion would be a better match. The user selects the option they prefer.
• The Review section asks the user to complete the 4-item SURE (Sure of Myself, Understand Information, Risk-Benefit Ratio, Encouragement) screening test [ 41 ], and advises them to talk with an expert if they answer “no” to any of the questions. This section also includes information phone lines to ensure that users can seek confidential, accurate, and nonjudgmental support.
• Lastly, in the Next Steps section, users see a summary of their choice and the features that matter most to them, instructions for how to save the results, keep the results private, and find an abortion health care professional. Each section of the PtDA includes a “Leave” button in case users need to navigate away from the website quickly.

We calculated readability by inputting the plain text of the web-based PtDA into a SMOG Index calculator [ 32 ], which assessed the reading level of the web-based PtDA as grade 9.2.

To ensure users’ trust in the information as accurate and unbiased we provided a data declaration on the landing page: “the clinical information presented in this decision aid comes from Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists best practice guidelines.” On the landing page, we also specify “This website was developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Dalhousie University. This tool is not supported or connected to any pharmaceutical company.”

A total of 50 participants, including 25 patients and 25 health care professionals, reviewed the PtDA website and completed the survey between January and March 2021. The majority of patient (n=23, 92%) and health care professional (n=23, 92%) participants identified as cisgender women. Among patient participants, 16% (n=4) reported one or more previous abortions in various clinical settings. More than half (n=16, 64%) of health care professionals offered care in private medical offices, with other locations including sexual health clinics, community health centers, and youth clinics. Many health care professionals were family physicians (n=11, 44%), and other common types were nurse practitioners (n=7, 28%) and midwives (n=3, 12%). The mean proportion of the clinical practice of each health care professional devoted to abortion care was 18% (SD 13%). Most health care professional respondents (n=18, 72%) were involved with the provision of medication, but not procedural, abortion care. The characteristics of patient and health care professional participants are reported in Table 3 .

a In total, 4 participants reported a history of abortion care, representing 6 abortion procedures.

b Not available.

The mean System Usability Score met the threshold for good usability among both patient (mean 85.7, SD 8.6) and health care professional (mean 80, SD 12) participants, although some health care professionals agreed with the statement, “I found the website to be unnecessarily complex,” (see Multimedia Appendix 3 for the full distribution of responses from patient and health care professionals). All 25 patients and 22 out of 25 (88%) health care professional respondents indicated that the user-friendliness of the PtDA was good or the best imaginable. When asked what they liked most about the PtDA, both participant groups described the ease of use, comparison of options, and the explicit values clarification exercise. When asked what they liked least about the PtDA, several health care professionals and some patients pointed out that it was difficult to use on a cell phone. A summary of usability results is presented in Table 4 .

In total, 21 (84%) patients and 18 (72%) health care professionals felt that the PtDA was not missing any information needed to decide about the method of abortion in early pregnancy. While acknowledging that it is “hard to balance being easy to read/understand while including enough accurate clinical information,” several health care professionals and some patients indicated that the PtDA was too long and repetitive. Among the 4 (16%) patient participants who felt information was missing, the most common suggestion was a tool for locating an abortion health care professional. The 7 (28%) health care professionals who felt information was missing primarily made suggestions about the medical information included in the PtDA (eg, listing midwives as health care professionals with abortion care in scope of practice and the appropriateness of gender-inclusive terminology) and the accessibility of information for various language and cultural groups.

a Not available.

Implementation

Participants viewed the PtDA as a positive addition to current resources. Patients with a history of abortion care described looking for the information on the internet and speaking with friends, family members, and health care professionals. Compared with these sources of information, many patients liked the credibility and anonymity of the PtDA, whereas some disliked that it was less personal than a conversation. Further, 18 (72%) health care professional participants said that the PtDA would add to or replace the resources they currently use in practice. Compared with these other resources, health care professionals liked that the PtDA could be explored by patients independently and that it would support them in thinking about the option that was best for them. The disadvantages of the PtDA compared with existing resources were the length—which health care professionals felt would make it difficult to use in a clinical interaction—and the lack of localized information. In total, 23 each (92%) of patient and health care professional participants felt that they would use the PtDA before a consultation.

Principal Results

We designed a web-based, interactive PtDA for the choice of method of abortion in early pregnancy [ 42 ], taking a user-centered approach that involved usability testing with 36 patients and 25 health care professionals. Both patient and health care professional participants indicated that the PtDA had good usability and would be a valuable resource for decision-making. This PtDA fills a critical need to support the autonomy of patients and shared decision-making with their health care professional related to the preference-sensitive choice of method of abortion.

Comparison With Prior Work

A 2017 systematic review and environmental scan found that existing PtDAs for the method of abortion are of suboptimal quality [ 9 ]. Of the 50 PtDAs identified, all but one were created without expertise in decision aid design (eg, abortion services, reproductive health organizations, and consumer health information organizations); however, the development process for this UK-based pamphlet-style PtDA was not reported. The remaining PtDAs were noninteractive websites, smartphone apps, and PDFs that were not tested with users. The authors found that the information about methods of abortion was presented in a disorganized, inconsistent, and unequal way. Subsequent work has found that existing PtDAs emphasize medical (versus social, emotional, and practical) attributes, do not include values clarification, and can be biased to persuade users of a certain method [ 13 ].

To address some of the challenges identified in the literature, we systematically structured and designed elements of the PtDA following newly proposed IPDAS criteria (eg, showing positive and negative features with equal detail) [ 33 ]. We included an explicit values-clarification exercise, which a recent meta-analysis found to decrease decisional conflict and values-incongruent choices [ 43 ].

We based the decision aid on comprehensive and up-to-date scientific evidence related to the effectiveness and safety of medication abortion and procedural abortion; however, less evidence was available for nonmedical attributes. For example, many existing PtDAs incorrectly frame privacy as a “factual advantage” of medication abortion [ 13 ]. To address this, we included privacy in the About Me section as something that means “different things to different people.” Similarly, evidence suggests that patients who do not feel appropriately informed about the pain associated with their method of abortion are less satisfied with their choice [ 44 , 45 ]; and the degree of pain experienced varies across options and among individuals. Following the suggestion of patient participants to include stories and recognizing that evidence for the inclusion of narratives in PtDAs is emerging [ 46 ], we elected to develop brief first-person qualitative descriptions of the pain experience. The inclusion of narratives in PtDAs may be effective in supporting patients to avoid surprise and regret, to minimize affective forecasting errors, and to “visualize” their health condition or treatment experience [ 46 ]. Guided by the narrative immersion model, our goal was to provide a “real-world preview” of the pain experience [ 47 ].

In addition to integrating user perspectives on the optimal tone, content, and format of the PtDA, user testing provided evidence to inform the future implementation of the PtDA. A clear barrier to the completion of the PtDA during the clinical encounter from the health care professional perspective was its length, supporting the finding of a recent rapid realist review, which theorized that health care professionals are less likely to use long or otherwise complex PtDAs that are difficult to integrate into routine practice [ 48 ]. However, 46 out of 50 (92%) participants endorsed the use of the PtDA by the patient alone before the initial consultation, which was aligned with the patient participant’s preference to take an active role in making the final decision about their method of abortion as well as the best practice of early, pre-encounter distribution of PtDAs [ 48 ].

A unique feature of this PtDA was that it resulted from a broader program of integrated knowledge translation designed to support access to medication abortion once mifepristone became available in Canada in 2017. Guided by the principle that including knowledge users in research yields results that are more relevant and useful [ 49 ], we developed the PtDA in response to a knowledge user need, involved health care professional users as partners in our research process, including as coauthors, and integrated feedback from the expert panel. This parallels a theory of PtDA implementation that proposes that early involvement of health care professionals in PtDA development “creates a sense of ownership, increases buy-in, helps to legitimize content, and ensures the PtDA (content and delivery) is consistent with current practice” thereby increasing the likelihood of PtDA integration into routine clinical settings [ 48 ].

Viewed through an integrated knowledge translation lens, our findings point toward future areas of work to support access to abortion in Canada. Several patient participants indicated a need for tools to identify health care professionals who offer abortion care. Some shared that their primary health care professionals did not offer medication abortion despite it being within their scope of practice, and instead referred them to an abortion clinic for methods of counseling and care. We addressed this challenge in the PtDA by including links to available resources, such as confidential phone lines that link patients to health care professionals in their region. On the website we also indicated that patient users could ask their primary care providers whether they provide abortion care; however, we acknowledge that this may place the patient in a vulnerable position if their health care professional is uncomfortable with, or unable to, provide this service for any reason. Future work should investigate opportunities to shorten the pathway to this time-sensitive care, including how to support patients who use the decision aid to act on their informed preference for the method of abortion. This work may involve developing a tool for patients to talk to their primary care provider about prescribing medication abortion.

Strengths and Limitations

Several factors affect the interpretation of our work. Although potential patient users participated in the iterative development process, the patient perspective was not represented in a formal advisory panel in the same way that the health care professional experts were. Participant characteristics collected for the think-aloud interviews demonstrated that our patient sample did not include people with lower education attainment, for whom the grade level and length of the PtDA could present a barrier [ 50 ]. Any transfer of the PtDA to jurisdictions outside Canada must consider how legal, regulatory, and other contextual factors affect the choice of the method of abortion. Since this study was completed, we have explored additional strategies to address these concerns, including additional user testing with people from equity-deserving groups, drop-down menus to adjust the level of detail, further plain language editing, and videos illustrating core content. Since the focus of this study was usability, we did not assess PtDA effectiveness, including impact on knowledge, decisional conflict, choice predisposition and decision, or concordance; however, a randomized controlled trial currently underway will measure the impact of the PtDA on these outcomes in a clinical setting. Finally, our integrated knowledge translation approach added to the robustness of our study by ensuring that health care professionals and patients were equal partners in the research process. One impact of this partnered approach is that our team has received funding support from Health Canada to implement the website on a national scale for people across Canada considering their abortion options [ 51 ].

Conclusions

The PtDA provides people choosing a method of early abortion and their health care professionals with a resource to understand methods of abortion available in the Canadian context and support to make a values-aligned choice. We designed the PtDA using a systematic approach that included both patient and health care professional participants to help ensure its relevance and usability. Our future work will seek to evaluate the implementation of the PtDA in clinical settings, create alternate formats to enhance accessibility, and develop a sustainable update policy. We will also continue to advance access to abortion care in Canada with our broader integrated knowledge translation program of research.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants for contributing their time and expertise to the design of this tool. Family medicine residents CMB, NC, KD-L, and JS were supported by Sue Harris grants, Department of Family Practice, University of British Columbia. KJW was supported by the Vanier Scholar Award (2020-23). SM was supported by a Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar Award (18270). WVN was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Public Health Agency of Canada Chair in Applied Public Health Research (2014-2024, CPP-329455-107837). All grants underwent external peer review for scientific quality. The funders played no role in the design of this study, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of this paper.

Data Availability

Our ethics approval has specified the primary data is not available.

Authors' Contributions

KJW, SM, and MB conceived of and designed this study. CMB, NC, and KD-L led interview data collection, analysis, and interpretation with input from SM. RS and JS led survey data collection, analysis, and interpretation with input from SM and MB. AW, LCL, and WVN contributed to the synthesis and interpretation of results. KJW, SM, and LT wrote the first draft of this paper, and all authors contributed to this paper’s revisions and approved the final version.

Conflicts of Interest

None declared.

Patient decision aid prototype.

Raw data for pain narratives.

Full distribution of System Usability Scale scores for patients and providers.

• Norman WV. Induced abortion in Canada 1974-2005: trends over the first generation with legal access. Contraception. 2012;85(2):185-191. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Costescu D, Guilbert E, Bernardin J, Black A, Dunn S, Fitzsimmons B, et al. Medical abortion. J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2016;38(4):366-389. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Costescu D, Guilbert É. No. 360-induced abortion: surgical abortion and second trimester medical methods. J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2018;40(6):750-783. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Wennberg JE. Unwarranted variations in healthcare delivery: implications for academic medical centres. BMJ. 2002;325(7370):961-964. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Elwyn G, Frosch D, Rollnick S. Dual equipoise shared decision making: definitions for decision and behaviour support interventions. Implement Sci. 2009;4:75. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Sepucha KR, Mulley AG. A practical approach to measuring the quality of preference-sensitive decisions. In: Edwards A, Elwyn G, editors. Shared Decision-Making in Health Care: Achieving Evidence-based Patient Choice. Oxford. Oxford University Press; 2009;151-156.
• Elwyn G, Laitner S, Coulter A, Walker E, Watson P, Thomson R. Implementing shared decision making in the NHS. BMJ. 2010;341:c5146. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Légaré F, Adekpedjou R, Stacey D, Turcotte S, Kryworuchko J, Graham ID, et al. Interventions for increasing the use of shared decision making by healthcare professionals. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2018;7(7):CD006732. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Donnelly KZ, Elwyn G, Thompson R. Quantity over quality-findings from a systematic review and environmental scan of patient decision aids on early abortion methods. Health Expect. 2018;21(1):316-326. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Sepucha KR, Abhyankar P, Hoffman AS, Bekker HL, LeBlanc A, Levin CA, et al. Standards for Universal Reporting of Patient Decision Aid Evaluation studies: the development of SUNDAE checklist. BMJ Qual Saf. 2018;27(5):380-388. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Stacey D, Lewis KB, Smith M, Carley M, Volk R, Douglas EE, et al. Decision aids for people facing health treatment or screening decisions. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2024;1(1):CD001431. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Wong SSM, Thornton JG, Gbolade B, Bekker HL. A randomised controlled trial of a decision-aid leaflet to facilitate women's choice between pregnancy termination methods. BJOG. 2006;113(6):688-694. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Donnelly KZ, Elwyn G, Theiler R, Thompson R. Promoting or undermining quality decision making? A qualitative content analysis of patient decision aids comparing surgical and medication abortion. Womens Health Issues. 2019;29(5):414-423. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Grant K. Long-awaited abortion pill Mifegymiso makes Canadian debut. The Globe and Mail. 2017. URL: https:/​/www.​theglobeandmail.com/​news/​national/​long-awaited-abortion-pill-mifegymiso-rolls-out-in-canada/​article33695167/​?ref=http:/​/www.​theglobeandmail.​com& [accessed 2023-04-03]
• Norman WV, Munro S, Brooks M, Devane C, Guilbert E, Renner R, et al. Could implementation of mifepristone address Canada's urban-rural abortion access disparity: a mixed-methods implementation study protocol. BMJ Open. 2019;9(4):e028443. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Munro SB, Dunn S, Guilbert ER, Norman WV. Advancing reproductive health through policy-engaged research in abortion care. Semin Reprod Med. 2022;40(5-06):268-276. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Dunn SI, Bhati DK, Reszel J, Kothari A, McCutcheon C, Graham ID. Understanding how and under what circumstances integrated knowledge translation works for people engaged in collaborative research: metasynthesis of IKTRN casebooks. JBI Evid Implement. 2023;21(3):277-293. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Norman WV, Guilbert ER, Okpaleke C, Hayden AS, Lichtenberg ES, Paul M, et al. Abortion health services in Canada: results of a 2012 national survey. Can Fam Physician. 2016;62(4):e209-e217. [ FREE Full text ] [ Medline ]
• Munro S, Guilbert E, Wagner MS, Wilcox ES, Devane C, Dunn S, et al. Perspectives among canadian physicians on factors influencing implementation of mifepristone medical abortion: a national qualitative study. Ann Fam Med. 2020;18(5):413-421. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Munro S, Wahl K, Soon JA, Guilbert E, Wilcox ES, Leduc-Robert G, et al. Pharmacist dispensing of the abortion pill in Canada: diffusion of innovation meets integrated knowledge translation. Implement Sci. 2021;16(1):76. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Health care policy and strategies program. Call for proposals: funding opportunities for sexual and reproductive health. Health Canada. URL: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/health-care-policy-strategies-program.html [accessed 2024-03-14]
• Dopp AR, Parisi KE, Munson SA, Lyon AR. A glossary of user-centered design strategies for implementation experts. Transl Behav Med. 2019;9(6):1057-1064. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Vaisson G, Provencher T, Dugas M, Trottier ME, Dansokho SC, Colquhoun H, et al. User involvement in the design and development of patient decision aids and other personal health tools: a systematic review. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(3):261-274. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Witteman HO, Maki KG, Vaisson G, Finderup J, Lewis KB, Steffensen KD, et al. Systematic development of patient decision aids: an update from the IPDAS collaboration. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):736-754. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Joseph-Williams N, Newcombe R, Politi M, Durand MA, Sivell S, Stacey D, et al. Toward minimum standards for certifying patient decision aids: a modified Delphi consensus process. Med Decis Making. 2014;34(6):699-710. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Stacey D, Volk RJ, IPDAS Evidence Update Leads (Hilary Bekker, Karina Dahl Steffensen, Tammy C. Hoffmann, Kirsten McCaffery, Rachel Thompson, Richard Thomson, Lyndal Trevena, Trudy van der Weijden, and Holly Witteman). The International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) collaboration: evidence update 2.0. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):729-733. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Hoffman AS, Volk RJ, Saarimaki A, Stirling C, Li LC, Härter M, et al. Delivering patient decision aids on the internet: definitions, theories, current evidence, and emerging research areas. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2013;13(Suppl 2):S13. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kanstrup C, Mäkelä M, Graungaard AH. Women's reasons for choosing abortion method: a systematic literature review. Scand J Public Health. 2018;46(8):835-845. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Murray ME, Casson M, Pudwell J, Waddington A. Patients' motivation for surgical versus medical abortion. J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2019;41(9):1325-1329. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kummervold PE, Chronaki CE, Lausen B, Prokosch HU, Rasmussen J, Santana S, et al. eHealth trends in Europe 2005-2007: a population-based survey. J Med Internet Res. 2008;10(4):e42. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Early abortion options. Reproductive Health Access Project. 2022. URL: https://www.reproductiveaccess.org/resource/early-abortion-options/ [accessed 2019-03-24]
• Readability Formulas: free readability assessment tools to help you write for your readers. URL: https://readabilityformulas.com/ [accessed 2022-12-15]
• Martin RW, Andersen SB, O'Brien MA, Bravo P, Hoffmann T, Olling K, et al. Providing balanced information about options in patient decision aids: an update from the International Patient Decision Aid Standards. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):780-800. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Lundgrén-Laine H, Salanterä S. Think-aloud technique and protocol analysis in clinical decision-making research. Qual Health Res. 2010;20(4):565-575. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Bangor A, Kortum PT, Miller JT. An empirical evaluation of the system usability scale. Int J Hum Comput Interact. 2008;24(6):574-594. [ CrossRef ]
• Elo S, Kyngäs H. The qualitative content analysis process. J Adv Nurs. 2008;62(1):107-115. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Bansback N, Li LC, Lynd L, Bryan S. Development and preliminary user testing of the DCIDA (Dynamic Computer Interactive Decision Application) for 'nudging' patients towards high quality decisions. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2014;14:62. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Trenaman L, Munro S, Almeida F, Ayas N, Hicklin J, Bansback N. Development of a patient decision aid prototype for adults with obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep Breath. 2016;20(2):653-661. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Degner LF, Sloan JA, Venkatesh P. The control preferences scale. Can J Nurs Res. 1997;29(3):21-43. [ Medline ]
• Patev AJ, Hood KB. Towards a better understanding of abortion misinformation in the USA: a review of the literature. Cult Health Sex. 2021;23(3):285-300. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Légaré F, Kearing S, Clay K, Gagnon S, D'Amours D, Rousseau M, et al. Are you SURE?: Assessing patient decisional conflict with a 4-item screening test. Can Fam Physician. 2010;56(8):e308-e314. [ FREE Full text ] [ Medline ]
• The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. URL: https://www.sexandu.ca/its-my-choice/ [accessed 2024-03-30]
• Witteman HO, Ndjaboue R, Vaisson G, Dansokho SC, Arnold B, Bridges JFP, et al. Clarifying values: an updated and expanded systematic review and meta-analysis. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):801-820. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Cavet S, Fiala C, Scemama A, Partouche H. Assessment of pain during medical abortion with home use of misoprostol. Eur J Contracept Reprod Health Care. 2017;22(3):207-211. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Baraitser P, Free C, Norman WV, Lewandowska M, Meiksin R, Palmer MJ, et al. Improving experience of medical abortion at home in a changing therapeutic, technological and regulatory landscape: a realist review. BMJ Open. 2022;12(11):e066650. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Shaffer VA, Brodney S, Gavaruzzi T, Zisman-Ilani Y, Munro S, Smith SK, et al. Do personal stories make patient decision aids more effective? An update from the International Patient Decision Aids Standards. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):897-906. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Shaffer VA, Focella ES, Hathaway A, Scherer LD, Zikmund-Fisher BJ. On the usefulness of narratives: an interdisciplinary review and theoretical model. Ann Behav Med. 2018;52(5):429-442. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Joseph-Williams N, Abhyankar P, Boland L, Bravo P, Brenner AT, Brodney S, et al. What works in implementing patient decision aids in routine clinical settings? A rapid realist review and update from the International Patient Decision Aid Standards collaboration. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):907-937. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Guide to knowledge translation planning at CIHR: integrated and end-of-grant approaches. Government of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 2012. URL: http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/45321.html [accessed 2018-10-08]
• Muscat DM, Smith J, Mac O, Cadet T, Giguere A, Housten AJ, et al. Addressing health literacy in patient decision aids: an update from the International Patient Decision Aid Standards. Med Decis Making. 2021;41(7):848-869. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• The CART access project. Contraception and Abortion Research Team (CART-GRAC). 2024. URL: https://cart-grac.ubc.ca/the-cart-access-project-2/ [accessed 2024-01-28]

Abbreviations

Edited by T Leung; submitted 07.05.23; peer-reviewed by G Sebastian, R French, B Zikmund-Fisher; comments to author 11.01.24; revised version received 23.02.24; accepted 25.02.24; published 16.04.24.

©Kate J Wahl, Melissa Brooks, Logan Trenaman, Kirsten Desjardins-Lorimer, Carolyn M Bell, Nazgul Chokmorova, Romy Segall, Janelle Syring, Aleyah Williams, Linda C Li, Wendy V Norman, Sarah Munro. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 16.04.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.