Using mobile phone diaries to explore children’s everyday lives

Abstract

This article describes a novel approach to experience sampling as a response to the challenges of researching the everyday lives of young children at home. Parents from 11 families used mobile phones to send the research team combined picture and text messages to provide 'experience snapshots' of their child's activities six times on each of three separate days. The article describes how the method aligns with an ecocultural approach, illustrates the variation in children's experiences and provides sufficient detail for researchers to adapt the method for the purposes of collecting data in other contexts. The article summarizes the benefits and shortcomings from the perspectives of families and researchers.

Daily rhythms of young children in the 24/7 economy: A comparison of children in day care and day and night care

“…Temporal mood variations have also been found among children, although diary studies on children are scarce (see Plowman and Stevenson, 2012), and knowledge lacking especially with respect to children in day and night care. In their mobile diary study of school-aged children (N = 60), Malinen et al (2015) found that mood fluctuations followed the structure of the school week: irritability was at its lowest on Fridays and highest on Sundays.…”

Using a smartphone app in qualitative research: the good, the bad and the ugly

“…Efficiency is further enhanced by the instant transfer of data (Patel et al, 2013;Sonck and Fernee, 2013). Smartphone apps are interactive and user-friendly, which can improve the response rate and reduce drop-out (Chen, 2011;Plowman and Stevenson, 2012) as interest can be sustained longer (Dennison et al, 2013).…”

“…One option was to ask fans to use their phone to take photos and send them to us, as used successfully by Plowman and Stevenson (2012).…”

“…This can give an insight into not just what people are doing but where and when they are doing it. Images can be uploaded to give further contextual information (Plowman and Stevenson, 2012).…”

“…Diary-based methods have not generally followed advances in technology, with empirical studies still overwhelmingly providing participants with audio or video equipment (see for example Cherrington and Watson, 2010;Tamminen and Holt, 2010;Williamson et al, 2011) or maintaining the written format (see for example Day and Thatcher, 2009;Duke, 2012). One example where advances in technology have been utilised in audiovisual methods is Plowman and Stevenson's (2012) study that collected qualitative data by asking parents to use their mobile phone to take and send images for a family time use study.…”