The Personality, Motivation, and Cognition (PMC) Diary (Version 2.0)
For further info, contact Eshkol Rafaeli at erafaeli@barnard.columbia.edu
Purpose:
The PMC Diary (Version 2.0) is a Palm-OS
questionnaire program designed to collect repeated responses in daily or
within-day diary studies. The program is appropriate for both time-based and
event-based studies. Researchers interested in this program may also wish to
consider alternative available programs such as ESP for the Palm environment
(see http://www2.bc.edu/~barretli/esp/)
or ISIS for the Pocket-PC environment (for information, contact raffety@ccplex.com).
Requirements:
The program operates on the Palm-OS platform, and requires
access to a desktop PC for the installation, management, and retrieval of data.
The program does not require much memory space on the palm-top, and allows for
hundreds of diary entries to be saved and retrieved.
Capabilities:
- Questions: PMC Diary
allows researchers to include a variable number of questions. Each
question is presented on a separate screen. A response advances the
program to the next screen, but participants can retrace their steps
(using a "Back" button).
- Signals: PMC Diary
can be programmed to signal (beep) the participant at fixed intervals.
- Time-flexibility:
Participants have some flexibility in the use of the program.
- a) Snooze: When
signaled for a response, participants can request a delay
("Snooze") ranging in time from 5 minutes to 90 minutes (with a
default of 15 minutes).
- b) Sleep: When
participants complete the final entry of the day, they can instruct the
program to shut off until a certain time the next day, at which point the
program returns to its signaling schedule.
- * Compliance checks: Time and
Date stamps for the beginning and end of each diary entry are included in
the saved data.
- * Time-limits: to ensure that
each diary entry is completed in one seating, the program times-out after
a set length of time (but retains those responses that were entered).
* Blocked access: to limit the risk of participant access to data, and to
increase battery life, PMC Diary "takes over" the
Palm device and blocks access to all other programs on the device.
* Data handling: Data are saved as a comma-delimited text file, which can be
immediately imported into Excel or other desk-top programs.
Limitations:
- * PMC Diary
currently uses a uniform response format (a 0-9 scale) for all question
screens. In our own research, we have found this response format flexible
enough to serve both rating-scale questions and discrete-answer questions;
nonetheless, we hope to remove this limitation from future versions.
- * At present, questions
cannot be randomized.
- * Also at present, the
documentation of the program is limited. It is not an off-the-shelf
product, and usage of it requires some training.
Availability and cost:
Researchers interested in using the PMC Diary
should contact Eshkol
Rafaeli, who is now in the Psychology Department, Barnard College, Columbia University,
(email: erafaeli@barnard.columbia.edu).
Last revised September, 2003
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