"Day Reconstruction Method" offers way to track diurnal affect rhythms

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) was designed to enable the tracking of activities from the previous day while minimizing recall biases. Participants are given the following instructions...

"Think of your day as a continuous series of scenes or episodes in a film. Give each episode a brief name that will help you remember it (e.g., “commuting to work” or “at lunch with B”). Write down the approximate times at which each episode began and ended. The episodes people identify usually last between 15 minutes and 2 hours. Indications of the end of an episode might be going to a different location, ending one activity and starting another, or a change in the people you are interacting with."

For each episode listed, participants select what they were doing (from a provided list), with whom they were interacting (if anyone), and select from among a list of 12 emotion adjectives to indicate how they were feeling.

Stone et al (2006) had 909 women come in large groups to complete the DRM.

Findings regarding the DRM...

1. Mean num of episodes per day was 14 and median episode length was 61 mins.
2. Were able to complete the exercise in less than 1 hour.
3. Able to recruit and run large numbers of participants.
4. Authors point out that experiences can be expanded to include other variables such as symptoms and health behaviors.

Findings regarding diurnal emotion cycles...

1. Bimodal pattern observed for both positive and negative emotions.
2. For the 3 positive emotions, intensity had a 1st peak at around noon and a 2nd peak in the evening.
3. For the negative emotions, intensity peaked around 10 a.m., and then again at 4 or 5pm (although this pattern was not observed for all negative emotions).
4. The emotion tired did not fit the bimodal pattern. It conformed to a "v" shaped pattern. Tired reached its lowest point around noon and then increased as the day progressed. The authors speculate that this is because tired is independent of daily activities; that it is more dependent of physiological processes than the other emotions.
5. Diurnal cycles observed for all emotions, though some were more strongly tied to time of day than others.
• Strongest diurnal pattern observed for tired was the emotion most strongly linked to time of day. Time of day explained > 18.5% of the variance in the tired.
• Weakest diurnal patterns occurred for criticized, depressed, and angry.
6. Overall, positive affect (happy, enjoy) increases throughout the day, whereas negative feelings (angry, depressed, frustrated, worry) decrease. Tired decreases throughout the day.
7. Particularly interesting was that after statistically accounting for activities the diurnal patterns for enjoy and frustrated flattened out. For example, enjoy showed a peak at noon; this peak was eliminated after partialling out the effect of activities (e.g., lunch).

This research was limited to females so it remains to be seen whether males will exhibit diurnal emotion cycles similar or distinct from females.

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Stone, A. A., Schwartz, J. E., Schkade, D., Schwarz, N., Krueger, A., & Kahneman, D. (2006). A population approach to the study of emotion: Diurnal rhythms of a working day examined with the day reconstruction method. Emotion, 6(1), 139–149. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.6.1.139