DearScholar: A mobile application to conduct qualitative and quantitative diary research

Increasingly, scholars in the social and behavioral sciences prefer longitudinal data over crosssectional data to explore new research phenomena, test effects, and build theories. Indeed, toptier journals in, among others, management, psychology, and organization science nowadays tend to reject studies in which no longitudinal data has been used to investigate causal relations (e.g., Bono & McNamara, 2011; de Jonge, 2011; Rico, 2013) in particular when testing mediation effects (cf. Kline, 2015).


Background
Increasingly, scholars in the social and behavioral sciences prefer longitudinal data over crosssectional data to explore new research phenomena, test effects, and build theories. Indeed, toptier journals in, among others, management, psychology, and organization science nowadays tend to reject studies in which no longitudinal data has been used to investigate causal relations (e.g., Bono & McNamara, 2011;de Jonge, 2011;Rico, 2013) in particular when testing mediation effects (cf. Kline, 2015).
Diary studies are one particular class of research methods in which "self-report instruments [are] used repeatedly … to investigate social, psychological, and physiological processes, within everyday situations…" (Bolger et al., 2003, p. 578). While there is a rich tradition of diary studies (cf. Iida et al., 2012;Ohly et al., 2010), these methods are used relatively infrequently to collect data compared to other methods to collect longitudinal data such as experiments, panel studies, and archival research. Given the administrative burden of diary studies for both respondents (i.e., research participants) and researchers, their relative unfamiliarity (or unpopularity) is understandable.
However, because of their potential to obtain a better understanding of both between and, especially within individual differences over time, scholars across disciplines call for more research in which diary methods are applied, such as in public administration (e.g., Bakker, 2015;Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017), marketing (e.g., Elliott et al., 2005), and health research (e.g., Jones, 2000).

DearScholar and other diary research apps
DearScholar is a hybrid, open-source smartphone application (app) that can be used on iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) and Android devices (basically all other smartphones and tablets) to conduct diary studies and, obviously, for other types of longitudinal research such as repeatedsurvey designs and log studies. DearScholar's aim is to facilitate the research process for both respondents and researchers. Researchers can specify the number of measurement occasions (i.e., measurement schedule), survey layout, and question format. Respondents only have to download the app from the App Store 1 or Google Play 2 , fill out their assigned credentials, and start participating.
A limited number of alternative (commercial) diary research apps have been developed, including Indeemo (2020), LifeData (2020), Open Data Kit (2020), PIEL Survey (2020), REDCap (2020), and Teamscope (2020). Acknowledging their value, some of these apps target the researcher as primary respondent instead of research participants; some are rather expensive for (large-scale) projects and make it difficult to change diary tasks during the study period; some are especially designed to collect qualitative data or quantitative data for one particular type of platform only (often Android); some store data outside the European Union, which is problematic for European researchers; and-last but not least-most alternative apps are closed-source projects.

Use cases
Currently, DearScholar is applied in a study by Glenn Houtgraaf MSc, Dr. Peter M. Kruyen and Prof. Dr. Sandra van Thiel to investigate work-related creativity in government organizations. The app is used to follow about 100 participants over a period of six months, asking them closed-and open-ended questions at bi-weekly measurement occasions to investigate creative processes. In 2021, Liesbeth Faas MSc, Dr. Peter M. Kruyen, and Prof. Dr. Sandra van Thiel will replicate this study in local care teams.