Using Solicited Written Qualitative Diaries to Develop Conceptual Understandings of Sleep

What Is Already Known?

Solicited qualitative diaries have been used to study many social settings. The solicited written diary method can benefit from continued social scientific application and deliberate analysis to confirm and strengthen its methodological applicability.

What This Paper Adds?

Sleep has become a legitimate area of social investigation, yet these understandings of sleep could benefit from further qualitative inquiry. This article presents the methodological analysis of a written solicited qualitative diary as applied to the study of sleep. Results from a sample of university lives highlight the written diary’s capabilities in developing credible results for understanding the meanings of sleep. Methodological lessons include how diaries act as opportunities for flexible participation and access to sleep experiences, that diaries benefit from the researcher’s ongoing encouragement for creative expression and confidence development among diarists, how the completion of multiple diary entries among participants necessitates a motivated and incentivized sample, and that researchers remain reflexive about possible instrumental and researcher influences on data collection.

Diaries for the purpose of research, or solicited diaries, take several forms that range from structured time- and calendar-based entries to highly reflective and freely structured narrative accounts known as unstructured, research-driven, and commissioned diaries (Bytheway & Johnson, 2002; Elliot, 1997; Jackson & Imperio, 2005; Meth, 2003; Monrouxe, 2009). Structured diaries in social research are synonymous with time–budget studies that ask participants to record how much time they spend doing activities (Bytheway & Johnson, 2002; Plummer, 2001). In sleep research, these diaries are used for assessing sleep quantity across time (Bae & Avidan, 2008; Dement & Vaughan, 1999; Wyatt, Cvengros, & Ong, 2012). Semistructured solicited diaries combine the structured guidance of procedures or instructions provided to diary participants, also known as diarists, with the ability for diarists to “log” their versions of daily thoughts, feelings, or events in their own styles and rhythms (Harvey, 2011).

Solicited diaries have shown their merits in the study of self and social activity, interactions, feelings and emotions, reflections, priorities, challenges, and management (Elliot, 1997; Jackson & Imperio, 2005). The benefits of solicited diaries are similar to interview methods in capturing detailed representations of reality (Alaszewski, 2006a; Hislop, Arber, Meadows, & Venn, 2005). Perhaps diaries are superior in this respect since they permit researchers to access certain experiences at their nearest points of occurrence which can reduce recall bias (Alaszewski, 2006a; Elliot, 1997; Kenten, 2010). Solicited diaries are advantageous when studying sleep since other qualitative methods such as observation and interviews are difficult to apply without the likelihood of altering sleep routines and rhythms as well as committing unethical intrusions into private times and spaces (Hislop et al., 2005). Although any research method that asks participants to share primary information will be intrusive, solicited diaries can give research participants more autonomy to record as many intimate facets of the social experience as they wish. Diarists could be more comfortable sharing a sensitive experience in their private writing compared to that of a sensitive question during an on-the-spot observational encounter or face-to-face interview (Coxon, 1994; Milligan, Bingley, & Gatrell, 2005).

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the use of the solicited written qualitative diary, as a prioritized tool, can advance, confirm, and refine our social understandings of sleep. The article begins by defining the situational contexts and consequences of university students’ sleep. The solicited written diary method is explained, followed by an exploration of findings from sleep diaries received from 48 senior undergraduate students (i.e., third- and fourth-year bachelor’s degree students) at a midsized Canadian university. The diary’s data collection and interpretive potential are demonstrated through the analysis of a primary emergent theme in the diary: sleep and academic accomplishment. Academic accomplishment is interpreted as a conflicting ritual of obligation that often take precedence over the need and want for sleep. The obligation of academic accomplishment is difficult to escape, but students find ways to achieve desirable sleep by shutting off. “Shut off” is achieved in four observed ways with the development of personalized management techniques, favorable rhythms of the scheduled calendar week, introspective bargaining, and the sleep fritter. The article concludes with an extensive discussion of the method’s strengths and precautions as applied to the study of sleep.

Quantitative Research on Student Sleep and the Ongoing Need for Intensive Qualitative Inquiry

The established obligations of university education combined with the demands of a fast-paced and technologically enhanced student life can create pressures on student rhythms, routines, values, and norms which can be consequential for sleep. Quantitatively driven studies of student sleep, mainly of first-year university and college students, have addressed student experiences by examining sleep patterns and practices (Forquer, Camden, Gabriau, & Johnson, 2008; Machado, Varella, & Andrade, 1998), associations between sleep and academic performance (Buboltz et al., 2001, 2006; Hershner & Chervin, 2014; K. E. Kelly, Kelly, & Clanton, 2001; Onder, Besoluk, Iskender, Masal, & Demirhan, 2014; Patrick et al., 2017; Thatcher, 2008), the influence of student stress, academic demands, and social activities on sleep quantity and quality (Galambos, Dalton, & Maggs, 2009; Galambos, Howard, & Maggs, 2010) and gender differences (Buboltz et al., 2001; Forquer et al., 2008; Galambos et al., 2009; Lukowski & Milojevich, 2015). In the analysis of sleep and its interaction with academic life, little seems to be recorded, and much seems to be assumed, about the actual everyday/night sleep lives of university students. With the recent exception of Coveney (2014) who adopts semistructured interviews to examine the student sleep management experience, no intensive qualitative inquiry has been carried out to examine how university students actually experience sleep, see sleep as a meaningful activity, and articulate its situational conditions. This is despite the emergence of qualitative sleep research among and between other identified social groups such as sexes and genders (Hislop, 2007; Kirkman, 2010; Venn, 2007; Venn, Arber, Meadows, & Hislop, 2008), children and adolescents (Moran-Ellis & Venn, 2007; Williams, Lowe, & Griffiths, 2007), and older adults (Venn & Arber, 2011).

When social scientists study sleep using qualitative methods, they are careful to recognize how sleep observations are actually not about sleep itself but rather provide social representations about the activities and social interactions that occur before, during, and after the sleep act (Hislop et al., 2005; Williams, 2008). Social scientific sleep observations serve to contribute to our understanding about the social and cultural dimensions of sleep itself but, as Williams (2008) proposes, the study of sleep also offers a unique social standpoint from which to understand other dimensions of social life.

Data collection

Solicited written qualitative sleep diaries were collected from undergraduate students during a fourth-year special topic seminar entitled “Sleep in the Contemporary World: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.” The instructor offered the course once per year over a 4-year period (i.e., four academic terms). The course was an “elective” credit whereby students could self-select the course in support of their degree fulfillment. The diaries were initially assigned to students with the purpose of getting students to write and reflect on their own sleep experiences. They were assigned in the first week of the academic term and submitted with a floating due date. Students were required to complete diaries on five consecutive nights during the first 2 years and for three nights during the last 2 years of the course offering. All students were able to complete the consecutive entries anytime between September and December or January and April of an academic term with the understanding that diary completion, and sleep itself, can be very personal activities requiring varying degrees of comfort and readiness (Milligan et al., 2005). This also gave students opportunities to write their diaries during times they believed the consecutive nights could be completed. The number of actual nightly entries completed ranged between three and five nights. The 48 submitted diaries generated a total of 182 entries over four terms or an average of 3.8 nightly entries per student.

Students who did not complete five nights during the first year of the diary assignment verbally commented how five consecutive entries were a challenge given their diverse responsibilities and nightly schedules across a week (e.g., part-time job shifts, travel between home and school for weekends, and anticipated and unanticipated social engagements). The instructor assigned consecutive five nights for the second offering of the course and then decided to reduce the number of entries to three consecutive nights for the third and fourth offerings. The instructor wished to examine whether any changes would occur in the quality of diary entries and student completion.

The lengths of entries (determined by number of lines per entry in a single-spaced MS Word document with Times New Roman 12 font), ranged from a minimum of 7 lines to a maximum of 57 (2.25 pages). There was only a modest decline in the average length of entries over time which has been observed in previous diary studies (Bytheway & Johnson, 2002; Kemsley, 1979). The highest average entry length occurred for night one entries with an average length of 29.7 lines. Diary entry lengths would decline modestly by the final entry with an average length of 27 lines per page. There were inconsequential differences between three and five night diary completions on diary entry lengths.

A sleep diary intended for teaching and learning became a solicited qualitative method for the purpose of research after the instructor received the first diary submissions in late September of the first course offering. The initial submissions demonstrated detailed, reflective sleep accounts: The length and thoughtfulness of the entries exceeded the instructor’s initial expectations. The instructor also become a researcher. Knowing that student sleep research was largely quantitatively driven at the time (e.g., Buboltz et al., 2001; Forquer et al., 2008; Galambos et al., 2010; Thatcher, 2008), and having clearance from the Wilfrid Laurier University Research Ethics Board (REB File #2443), students were invited by the instructor to submit their diaries with the purpose of adding qualitative understandings to the issue of student sleep while promoting the potential trustworthiness of this qualitative method as a sleep research tool (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). The assignment itself was a course requirement, but students could voluntarily submit their diaries for research purposes. Students signed an REB-approved consent form prior to their submissions. It was made clear that students would not be academically advantaged or disadvantaged by their choice to contribute their diaries for research or not.

The written diary’s design replicated an audio diary template previously developed by Hislop, Arber, Meadows, and Venn (2005) for their project on Sleep in Aging Women with three modifications. The sleep quality scales (not reported in this article) were modified as well as the addition of two themes for exploration including the spatial definitions of sleep and the meaning of nonhuman elements (e.g., technologies, animals) as influenced by the situational analysis and mapping approaches of Clarke (2005). The diary’s semistructured design provided a middle ground between unstructured and structured diaries: The design was meant to achieve a fine balance between the need for guidance with an unfamiliar topic while preserving the ability for the diarists to determine their own response styles and recording priorities (Alaszewski, 2006a, 2006b; Elliot, 1997; Harvey, 2011). The researcher avoided the unstructured diary to abate the concern that participants would not be familiar enough with the sociocultural elements of sleep to frame their experiences. With a structured diary, students may have recounted their experiences in ways that were too precise to offer insight into their unique social and sleep situations. The diary instructions and guidelines are provided in Appendix of this article.

Sample

Of the 85 total students who enrolled in the course over the 4 years, 48 students shared their diaries for the research. The majority of the students who enrolled in the course over the four academic terms belonged to the university’s Bachelor of Concurrent Education program (70 of the 85). These students also held the highest admission average of all academic programs offered at the university campus at the time. The remaining students were majoring in community health, psychology, children’s studies, English, history, and the campus’ core interdisciplinary program then known as contemporary studies. Students’ ages were not requested, but it is assumed that all student participants were in their early 20s. Five males were enrolled in the course over the four terms and three submitted their diaries for this research.

Analysis

Analysis began at the point of data collection as diaries were submitted during the first term of the course’s offering (van den Hoonaard, 2015). The diary analysis was completed with the assistance of NVivo Version 11.0 and executed over the span of 4 years. The total number of analyzed diary submissions ranged from 12 to 18 per term which helped to establish a reasonable pace for the researcher’s diary analysis. Data were analyzed over the span of this period using the analytical process derived from constructivist grounded theory. The ability to analyze clusters of diaries was valuable for this method since the researcher was able to receive a sample of multiple diaries every academic year, then continually analyze, memo, open code, categorize, and conceptualize explanations through a process of analytical comparison (Charmaz, 2014). Student data reflected the questions that were asked in the diaries, and so overarching themes were influenced by the existing semi-structure of the diary. However, the diary’s semistructured design and narrative style of the entries enabled the researcher to investigate the emergence of “in vivo” codes: Unique concepts that spoke directly about the students’ sleep experiences. Concepts were provided directly from students’ accounts and were considered to be reportable according to the achievement of saturation and data adequacy (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Important to the determination of reportable data was the extent to which each code also captured the possible variations of meanings within each code (i.e., variations in meanings such as “good” or “bad,” types of activities associated with the concept).

Sleep and the “ritual of obligation”

Although I felt tired when I woke up, it was because I was waking up early for work after a Friday night, beginning of the weekend…. Unlike every other morning during the week, Saturday mornings I start work at 7:00 a.m., meaning I have to set my alarm and get up significantly earlier than I have to for the rest of the week. This back and forth schedule throughout the week (different class and work times every day), makes it difficult to establish a proper sleep routine. I would love to get to bed and get up every day at the same time, but University life doesn’t allow it. (Student Diarist 13)

Academic Accomplishments as Rituals of Obligation

The student diarists in this study overwhelmingly define their academic activities as accomplishments. Accomplishments are not defined as behaviorally routine. They are defined in reflective action. They involve a thoughtful process in that students are anticipatory and strategic about them, and ultimately they are defined by the completion of meaningful activity. Accomplishments are expressed by students in numerous ways. They are generally defined in terms like being “more productive,” having a “busy day,” a “busy week,” a “busy term,” and completing a “to-do list.” Sleep is the antithesis to accomplishment. When students are sleeping, they are not doing. Students begin their days with accomplishments on their minds:

Once my alarm went off at 7:30 a.m., I hit the snooze button once and then got up and out of bed. I wanted to get up earlier today so that I could have a full day to accomplish all that I wanted to. I have found lately that waking up later in the morning seems to make the day go by too fast, I feel less accomplished and at times more tired. (Student Diarist 10)

In the morning, I awoke at 8:30 a.m. to my boyfriend calling me. It was a good wakeup call because I needed to get up to do some work. But again, the morning came to me way too quickly. At first I thought I was able to sleep in this day. Then, the morning came and I remembered everything I had to do…. I think about what I have accomplished and what needs to be done in the weeks to come. (Student Diarist 35)

Sleep as ritual sacrifice, accomplishment as obligatory ritual

Accomplishments can be intrinsically motivating for students, such as feelings from getting good grades, but they are also expressed as obligations. Classes, readings, tests, and term papers are structured by deadlines established by instructors and the university. They are the obligatory activities that students think are necessary for completing the required task be it an essay, research paper, required reading, or studying for a midterm. If there is a choice between sleep and accomplishment, then students are inclined to choose accomplishment. Students wish to sleep more. Certain students recognize that more sleep can even advance the quality of their accomplishments, but the majority of the students believe this line of action can rarely, if ever, happen. Whether it is at night or in the morning, students compel themselves to accomplish at the expense of sleep:

Usually when I have something like an essay or an exam to study for, I find myself pushing my body to stay awake almost to the point of exhaustion as I’m sure many university students have done at some point or another. Schoolwork and university life in general has definitely had a major impact on not just my sleep habits but also the quality of my sleep these last 4 years. (Student Diarist 43)

I woke up to the sound of someone showering in the apartment. I felt decently well rested, but a little drowsy. I could have gone back to sleep again for probably another hour or so, but because I knew I had schoolwork to complete, I did not allow myself to sleep in. (Student Diarist 37)

Searching for shut off

No student in the sample admits that sleep is an easy choice to make over the everyday obligatory rituals of university education. One student remarks how school “has been stressing me out, making me feel like I should be going to bed later so I can finish everything” (Student Diarist 43). Some even see the loss of sleep as inevitable. This encroachment of work on sleep is noted by a student who suggests that the addition of over 2 hr of work time will inevitably become a familiar part of life in the near future:

This week was a very busy week for me at school and I believe this was reflected in my late nights going to bed. I went to bed around 1 a.m., when usually I try for 10:30 p.m., or 11 p.m. It is nearing the end of the semester and I have many projects and assignments. It is possible that I may be seeing this late hour more in the near future. (Student Diarist 35)

Incentives and “Supporting Mechanisms”

The diary assignment was accompanied with a modest grade requirement for the course (10% of the final grade). This may have encouraged them to prioritize its quality. It is stressed that nonparticipants performed just as well in their completions as those who volunteered their diaries, but it is also acknowledged that the grade incentive could be an influence on the “thickness” of diary accounts. This has implications for the transferability of the method to other social contexts where incentives are not easily available. Future applications of this solicited qualitative diary method could consider other forms of incentives to motivate completion (Meth, 2003). Recent research tests the influence of incentives on participation in qualitative research, but it remains unclear how incentives can bolster the depth of qualitative data obtained from participants (B. Kelly, Margolis, McCormack, LeBaron, & Chowdhury, 2017). Speculation turns to how this sleep diary method could generate data quality in other settings with the use of (a) monetary incentives; (b) what Clark (2010, p. 404) calls individual and collective “supporting mechanisms” such as participants having interest in the topic, feeling empowered through participation, or having the opportunity to contribute to the public good; and (c) their combinations. This article encourages further research into the influences, positive, and negative that incentives and supports can have on the quality of written diary data completion.

The diary instrument and the instructor-researcher as data influencers

The solicited written diary is trustworthy when the researcher is reflexive of how their status and identity can influence diarist interactions with the instrument as well as their contents within it. Bytheway and Johnson (2002), Monrouxe (2009), and Hislop et al. (2005) acknowledge how diary methods themselves can influence the kinds of data that researchers receive. They also note how the diary can modify the actions of diarists themselves. The sleep diarists rarely indicated that the exercise influenced their regular activities, but a few exceptions are noteworthy. Selected student accounts indicate how the diary influenced them to try new bedtime routines, sleep techniques and technologies, and testing sleep myths. One student decided to try a number of things during the duration of the diary. She first tried a sleep “app” on her phone by incorporating it her bedtime ritual:

Last night I tried out this sleep application that I downloaded on my phone. It was called “Relax” by Andrew Johnson. I did my usual thing; turned the fan on, fed the fish, closed my closet door and made sure my dog was with me. I also did not set my alarm clock on my phone so that I could achieve a longer sleep. (Student Diarist 18)

The identity and positionality of the researcher during the solicited diary exercise was uniquely multilayered: He was a curious consumer/reader, researcher, and instructor, with the latter two implying degrees of evaluative authority. Students’ communications were influenced by the knowledge that the instructor-researcher was their evaluator as well as a perceived “expert” in the area. For these reasons, students shared their reflective “lessons learned” or “what I found” moments from their diary experience to the instructor-researcher to confirm their fulfilment of learning outcomes:

The main learning experience I grasped from this entry is that my sleeping pattern changes every night. It may be because I am bringing in new strategies to help me achieve a better sleep. Tonight I am going to go back to my original way of falling asleep and see if my sleeping pattern stays the same or is different. I was really shocked that the cheese theory actually worked. (Student Diarist 18)

Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed that I do not feel quite as tired in my psychology class as I described earlier…. Although I do not sleep for the typical 8 hours a night, I have noticed that my body has adjusted and I feel quite normal throughout the day. I think this sleep journal caused me to focus on how much I was not sleeping which lead me to very negatively assess my sleep and how tired I felt the next day…(Diarist 19).

After writing about my sleep I’m finding that I’m not very picky about how I fall asleep or what wakes me up. As long as I feel like I get enough sleep I’m not bothered very much and my mood isn’t affected. I think that after more time I will be able to find a pattern or maybe find that this sleep was just a fluke because of our decision to sleep in. (Diarist 34)