Designing diary studies for academics and other ‘busy’ professionals: Challenging assumptions via the work-related diary design framework (WDDF)

The justification for decisions taken when designing diary studies receives limited commentary in the existing literature. However, where design decisions are recounted, often concerns are expressed relating to potential failure of diary studies, especially in studies with ‘busy’ participants such as work-related studies. Several assumptions about the ramifications of diary design decisions underlie these concerns, but they need to be surfaced and discussed in order for the diary method to evolve. This article proposes the work-related diary design framework for the development and design of work-related diary studies which is built from a critical literature review reading across 50 articles for assumption-related subtext. The framework is illustrated and explored with three qualitative diary studies with academics as participants, which were conducted by the authors; structured reflections on the design and conduct of the three studies are interwoven with the elucidation of the framework.