7 Use Cases for Diary Studies in BlockSurvey

Diary studies work best in BlockSurvey when the topic is sensitive and each entry is a short rating or a few lines of text. Your participants tell you more about their health and their workplace when you don't ask for a name, and BlockSurvey lets you run the whole diary without one.

What is a diary study?

In a diary study, the same people log their own experiences many times, each day or after a specific event, for a few days to a few months. You capture each moment before memory smooths it over.

A diary study is one kind of longitudinal study. Longitudinal means collecting data from the same people over time by any method. A diary study does it through frequent self-written entries.

The seven use cases at a glance

The seven use cases fall into three groups: health, research and education, and work.

Health and wellbeing diaries

Health diaries fit BlockSurvey best, because responses are encrypted end to end and the platform is HIPAA compliant.

1. Symptom and health diaries

Clinics and health researchers use symptom diaries to see how pain, sleep or side effects change between appointments. A patient who logs each evening gives you detail that a monthly recall question loses.

Questions to ask:

• Rate your pain today from 0 to 10.
• How many hours did you sleep last night?
• Did you take your medication today?
• Did anything make today better or worse?

Add a File Upload question if you want a photo of a rash or a meter reading. BlockSurvey encrypts each upload and accepts files up to 10 MB.

2. Mood and mental health diaries

Psychologists and wellbeing teams run mood diaries to spot patterns across a week or a month. Three questions take a participant under a minute.

Questions to ask:

• Rate your mood today from 1 to 5.
• Rate your stress today from 1 to 5.
• Name the one thing that affected your mood most.

Make the survey anonymous so a low-mood entry carries no name or email. BlockSurvey's AI analysis then groups the open-text answers into themes and reads their sentiment.

An anonymous diary can't trigger a personal follow-up. Put crisis support contacts on the closing screen of every mood diary.

3. Substance use diaries

Addiction and public health researchers ask participants to log drinking or smoking as it happens. Respondents tend to report less when a form carries their name, so anonymity protects the quality of your data.

Questions to ask:

• How many drinks did you have today?
• Where were you, and who were you with?
• Rate your strongest craving today from 0 to 10.

Research and education diaries

Researchers and teachers choose BlockSurvey for diaries when an ethics board or a classroom needs entries with no names on them.

4. Academic daily diary studies

Psychology and social science students run daily diary studies for a thesis on topics such as stress and sleep, or conflict in relationships. Ethics boards often ask you to keep identifying details apart from responses.

In BlockSurvey you can skip identity altogether. Each participant creates a private code and types it into every entry, so you can link their entries without holding a name.

Questions to ask:

• Enter your participant code.
• Describe the most stressful event of your day.
• Rate how well you slept last night from 1 to 5.

Export the responses and sort them by code to analyse each person's entries in R or SPSS.

5. Student reflection journals

Lecturers and placement coordinators ask students for a short reflection each week of a course or placement. Students admit confusion more readily when their name stays off the page.

Questions to ask:

• Describe the most useful thing you learned this week.
• Name one thing that still confuses you.
• Choose one thing to try next week.

Run the AI analysis on the second question to see the topics that confuse the cohort, then adjust next week's teaching.

Workplace and program diaries

At work and in funded programs, a diary shows you how an experience unfolds week by week, where a single survey shows one moment.

6. Employee experience diaries

HR teams use diaries to follow a new hire's first 30 days, or a team's workload through a busy season. Employees hold back when they think HR can trace an entry to them.

Questions to ask, twice a week:

• Rate your energy at work today from 1 to 5.
• Name your biggest blocker this week.
• Name one thing that helped.

On a team of five, writing style can identify the author. Share themes with managers and keep the raw entries to yourself.

7. Program evaluation diaries

Nonprofits and training providers ask participants to log after each session. Funders want evidence of change during the program, and a diary records it as it happens.

Questions to ask:

• Describe one thing from the last session that you used this week.
• Rate your confidence in the skill from 1 to 5.

BlockSurvey's longitudinal analysis compares the group's ratings across time frames, so you can show funders the trend from the first weeks to the last.

How to set up a diary study in BlockSurvey

You set up a diary study as one short survey that each participant fills in again and again.

1. Build a short form. Keep it to three to five questions, with one rating and one open-text question. Long forms end diaries early.
2. Add a participant code question and make it required. Give a recipe, such as the first two letters of your birth month plus the last two digits of your phone number.
3. Leave multiple submissions on. Each participant reuses the same link for every entry, so don't restrict the survey to one submission per user.
4. Set a recurring schedule. Go to Settings > Response Management > Schedule Response Collection and choose Recurring Schedule with a Daily frequency. Set the start and end time so the form opens each evening, then set the first and last date of the study. The recurrence guide shows each screen.
5. Send each prompt with a campaign. Add your participants to a contact list, then create an email or text campaign under Audience. Use Schedule for Later to set the date, time and time zone of a send, or build a drip campaign that sends a sequence over time.
6. Read the results three ways. Use the AI analysis for themes in the open text, and the longitudinal analysis for the group's answers week by week. Export the responses and sort by code to follow each person.

A campaign needs a contact list, so you hold each participant's email or phone number. Keep the participant code for linking entries, and check the anonymous survey setting before you send.

Pilot the diary with five people for three days before the full study. You will find the confusing question and the reminder time that works.

How to use longitudinal analysis for a diary study

Longitudinal Analysis & Forecast, part of BlockSurvey's longitudinal survey software, shows you how the whole group's answers moved from one week of the diary to the next.

1. Set the results date filter to All Responses, so the analysis includes every entry.
2. Open Analytics > AI Analytics and click Conduct Longitudinal Analysis.
3. Choose the Custom preset and create one time frame for each week of the diary. You can add up to 10 time frames.
4. Check Responses per time frame. The report flags any time frame with fewer than 30 answers to a question as a small sample.
5. Select your rating and open-text questions, and leave the participant code out. Questions tagged Personal data start unselected.
6. Pick the 1 year forecast and generate the report.

For example, a wellbeing team runs a four-week mood diary with 20 staff who log each workday. Each week holds up to 100 entries. Four custom time frames show the average mood rating for each week and the open-text themes that grew, such as workload.

Read the report with three cautions:

• The report pools everyone. Export the responses and sort by code to follow one person.
• One person adds many entries, so treat a Significant label with care.
• Participants who drop out leave the later weeks to those who stayed. Compare the response counts for each week before you compare the answers.

The longitudinal analysis guide covers every screen and term in the report.

Limits to know before you start

BlockSurvey handles collection and group-level analysis for a diary study, and you do the per-person analysis outside it.

• BlockSurvey has no video or screen recording. Product usage diaries that need them suit dedicated tools such as dscout or Indeemo.
• There is no per-person timeline. You build each participant's story from the export.
• The longitudinal analysis pools every entry and treats each as a separate response. Read it for the group trend.
• A short diary won't give you a forecast worth using. Forecasts need more time frames than a few weeks provide.

Build your first diary form in BlockSurvey and send it to a pilot group of five this week.