Summary: Diary studies involve a series of tradeoffs as researchers must capture participants’ natural behaviors, but the method to do so can be intrusive and reward producing more entries.
Sometimes referred to as mobile, digital, or online ethnography, diary studies involve a longitudinal collection of responses from participants and are meant to “capture life as it’s lived.” Diary studies are a type of context method . This article illustrates three common tradeoffs in qualitative diary studies that tend to complicate the diary-study design.
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Before you ask participants to log their behavior, you should ask the following questions (appropriate for any research effort):
