Experience sampling methods (aka diaries) are used to collect brief responses to questions about affect, cognitions, and behaviors 1 to many times per day over the course of some period of days. Given multiple data entry sessions, there in general 4 different schedules in which this can be accomplished:
- Interval-contingent reporting
- Signal-contingent reporting
- Event-contingent reporting
- Mixed
Interval-contingent
Participants respond at pre-determined times of the day.
e.g.,9:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 6:00 PM.
The times are pre-determined according to some interval of time.
Pros:
- Participants can anticipate upcoming diary entry session to make sure they are able to do so.
- Familiarity of schedule can ease anxiety
Cons:
- May not offer a representative sample of experiences throughout the day. For example, if the goal is to capture information about social experiences, morning and evening diary entry sessions in which people are likely to be at home, alone, or with family may not provide a limited sample of social interactions.
- The fact that participants can anticipate diary sessions may compel them to arrange their days to accommodate these sessions, which would wind up interfering with the very phenomena being examined.
Signal-contingent
Diary entries are entered upon receipt of a signal. Nowadays signals can include beeps, text messages, vibrations, or automated phone calls.
In practice, stratification is often used: a time is chosen randomly within each two-hour block and with perhaps constraints such as at least 1 hour between signals.
Pros:
- Does a better job than interval-contingent schedules of obtaining a representative sample of a range of different experiences.
- Participants cannot plan for or re-arrange their days to accommodate diary entries. They just never know when they will be “beeped”.
Cons:
- Signals may occur at times where data entry is not possible or dangerous such as during important meetings or while driving.
- Not knowing when a diary entry session may occur may be somewhat anxiety provoking for some.
Event-contingent
Diary entry sessions are triggered whenever a particular event occurs.
Employing this type of schedule requires careful training of participants to be sure that they recognize what is (and what is not) a target event.
Duration of data collection will of course depend on how frequently target events occur. It has been suggested that data collection continue until 30 events of each type have been reported by each participant (Moskowitz & Sadikaj, 2011).
Pros:
- This type of schedule is very useful for studies involving social interactions, conflict, anger, stressful events, etc.
- Useful where events are relatively rare.
Cons:
- Not appropriate where it is difficult or impossible to clearly define a particular event.
Mixed
Schedules can be combined so that the cons of one type of schedule can be mitigated while taking advantages of its pros.
- Combine event-contingent reports an interval based diary entries in order to capture the antecedents and/or consequences of particular events.
- A particularly exciting possibility now is to use physiological parameters captured by the many devices emerging that can do so, to trigger diary entries. For example, a smartphone app can be programmed so that a question about current activity is displayed whenever heart rate variability drops below a certain level.
- Another approach is the use of “measurement bursts” in which periods of intense data collection are interwoven with periods consisting of less intense or no data capture. Foo, Uy, and Baron (2009) signaled entrepreneurs 2 times/day for six 4-day periods with a week rest between these intervals.
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