Daily Diary Research in Education: A Primer for Researchers, Practitioners, and Policymakers

• In Event: Innovations for Complexity in Models and Design: Inference, Estimation, Classification, and Longitudinal Issues

Abstract

This paper advances daily diary methods as a powerful yet underutilized approach in education research—one that is methodologically rigorous, equity-centered, and attuned to the real-time experiences of youth. We illustrate these strengths through the Development-in-Sociocultural-Context Intensive Longitudinal Study (DILS), which gathered over 80,000 daily reports from adolescents across three sociopolitical eras: pandemic schooling, racial justice reckoning, and the rise of digital life. Daily diary designs offer unique insights into within-person variation, ecological context, and the lived rhythms of school engagement and well-being. We argue that these methods are not just innovative but essential for a future-facing education science. To encourage wider use, we offer publicly available tools and extend an open invitation for collaboration with like-minded researchers.

Authors

• Christina Scanlon, University of Chicago

• Gregory Pollard, University of Chicago

• Katherine Shah, University of Chicago

• Ming-Te Wang, University of Chicago