I’m employing a diary study for my MSc dissertation on image search, and I realized I was doing it all wrong today when I met with my supervisor and project sponsors. Well, okay I wasn’t entirely clueless but I did make some pretty bad assumptions about diary studies, and these were the lessons I learnt.
1. Don’t assume people remember what they noted in their diaries
I started off telling my participants that all they needed to do was fill in their diaries with descriptions detailed enough so that they would be able to recall the activities. I told them the study would last two weeks, based on some ballpark figures I discussed with my supervisor, and I told them that I might give them a call every now and then to “see how they were doing”. In a recent meeting my project sponsors and supervisor suggested that I should call them daily, because there’s a high chance that the participants would forget a lot of the rich detail that you want to get in a diary study interview.
I had to correct my slip by contacting every one of my participants to ask them permission to call them on a regular basis, and thankfully the ones who have gotten back to me so far have been totally cool with that because they were acquaintances or friends. But it was just bad foresight on my part.
2. Be as specific about your population as possible
When I sent the word out that I needed participants, I had a lot of friends were willing to participate because they had they time and they didn’t mind doing it (plus there was a £40 incentive). I didn’t think too much about the demographics of the population and I let in two participants who were edge-cases – a photographer and a graphic designer. In my study about domestic image search behavior, they’d stand out in a crowd. Thankfully I had other participants who were more “normal”, but I would’ve saved myself the embarrassment had I spent a bit more time thinking about who I should’ve been recruiting.
3. Research requires testing too
I assumed that people would quickly understand how to fill in the diary forms, because they were relatively straightforward. I was promptly advised to call in and check with my participants so that I could get a quick “feel” for the differences in behavior and data, and adjust the study process accordingly. Some participants, for example, may be more active internet users than others, for example – so they would need less “checking up” since they would have a lot more stuff to report after a few days of diary-filling. I initially thought that calling them they day after I had spoken to them was too soon, but there are ways to inform the participant of how often you need to get in touch with them.
4. Don’t believe everything you read in books
I guess it’s not all method-driven and form-filling. There’s a bit of an art to this, so I guess it takes a bit of practice to get a hang of it. My supervisor/project sponsors were forgiving and kind enough to guide me in the right direction, but I could’ve saved myself by asking more questions, talking to the right people, and not just basing my ideas off books.
update: I’m still looking for a few more participants, preferrably male aged 40 to 65. If you’re interested, please email me at boon [dot] chew [at] gmail [dot] com. For more info, click here.
