Ecological Momentary Assessment of Parental Well-Being and Time Use: Mixed Methods Compliance and Feasibility Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Parents often juggle multiple conflicting responsibilities, including work, childcare, and the household, making them a particularly burdened group. However, the impact of daily routines and associated (poor) well-being among parents has received relatively little attention. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is increasingly being used to capture real-time data and can help address this research gap. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to examine compliance rates and the feasibility of EMA for measuring daily well-being and time use among parents. METHODS: An exploratory mixed-methods study was conducted with 74 German parents (57/74, 77% women, (age: mean 37.6, SD 5.9 years). Participants completed a baseline questionnaire, followed by 4 daily EMA surveys (at 7:30 AM, 12 PM, 16:30 PM, and 21:30 PM) over a 1-week period, and a follow-up questionnaire. A subset of parents was also subsequently interviewed. Sociodemographic background and expected feasibility (open-ended questions) were surveyed at baseline, and feasibility was assessed at follow-up (closed- and open-ended questions) and in the interviews. State well-being (affective and cognitive), state stress, state as well as retrospective time-use were measured in the EMA surveys. Compliance and feasibility were examined using a combination of quantitative (descriptive analyses) and qualitative methodologies. RESULTS: Participants completed an average of 83% (SD 13%) of the daily surveys. Compliance varied by gender and age, where men (90% vs 80%) and older parents showed higher rates. Participants generally found the survey frequency and length manageable, though some suggested adjustments to the study period depending on their individual routines. The 7:30 AM survey was reported as the most challenging due to childcare drop-offs (40%-49%), followed by the 16:30 PM survey for similar reasons (7%-17%). The qualitative analysis further revealed additional points for improvement, for instance, the need for personalization (eg, individual adjustment of the survey timings and intervals), technical support, and the incorporation of gamification elements. Most interviewees (46% vs 23%) found the used measurement of well-being and stress to be appropriate. Regarding time use, they felt that the predefined activity groups (eg, personal care, working) were suitable (46%) but noted challenges assigning less frequent activities (eg, medical appointments) (5%-54%). Reporting the timings of time-use via consecutive questions (ie, specifying the duration or start and end times of an activity) was perceived as confusing (9%-69%), with participants expressing a preference for a visual overview, such as a Gantt chart. CONCLUSIONS: The study demonstrates that, when accounting for certain sociodemographic and study design factors, EMA can be a feasible method for data collection regarding daily well-being and time use, even in highly time-constrained populations like parents. This shows great potential for future research, such as exploring work-family conflict or performative gender roles and complementing established methods (eg, retrospective daily diaries). TRIAL REGISTRATION: OSF Registries osf.io/8qj3d; https://osf.io/8qj3d. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/54728.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".