Diary Study

Date: Oct 2nd, 2019

Name: Taufiq
Study: Water Consumption

Goal
The goal of the diary study was to understand drinking water consumption amongst working
women. The goal was to find out how often, when, and how much water is consumed during the
day.

Methodology
Recruitment 
I recruited participants using blackboard I received interest from many prospects but I selected
the first 4 participants.

Participants
A sum total of 4 participants participated in the study. All women with age range between 27-55
years.

Duration of Study
The study lasted for 3 days. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Participants were asked to
respond at the end of the day.

Data Collection Process

After signing an informed consent form the participants were formally enrolled in the study. I
created a three-day diary for each participant on google docs. I sent them clear instructions to set
a reminder on their phones to remind them to fill out the diary at the end of the day. The aim of
this study was to collect data around the following themes:

 Date and day of the week

 Age and sex of the participants
 Source of home’s drinking water
 Time period of water consumption episode
  Number of ounces of water consumed
 Whether the water was consumed with a meal
 The type of water consumed (tap/bottled). 

Diary Questions
Name of the Participant:
Age:
Occupation:

Monday
1. Do you feel that you had enough water today?
2. What was the source of the water (for today)? Highlight your Choice:
 Bottled Water
 Tap Water
 Water Filter
 All the above
3. What kind of water did you have? Highlight your Choice:
 Still
 Sparkling
 Others (Please specify)
4. Did you drink water before breakfast?
5. Did you drink water after every meal?
6. What other beverages did you drink? Did you use water to make other beverages? For
example, lemonade or tea?
7. Did you drink water right before going to bed?
8. Did you wake up last night to drink water?
9. Can you provide a rough estimate of the total amount of water you consumed today?
You can use the following figure to calculate your consumption (sorry about the image
quality).

Thank You!

Incentive for Participation

Since there was no budget to provide incentive for this study to the participants, I took extra
care to encourage the participants by sending them a warm introductory email, and an equally
important email at the conclusion of the study to thank the participants for their time.
 
Summary
Response rate:
Day 1 Response rate = 100%
Day 2 Response rate = 100%
Day 3 Response rate = 75% (On Day 3 a participant forgot to write their diary entry)
 
Findings
Tap water vs Bottled water
Participants were asked to write a diary entry every day. Out of 4 participants, only 1 participant
bought bottled water once over the course of three day. In a post diary completion interview a
participant reported that the diary made them aware of their sustainable goals and they
consciously bought less bottled water. There was one participant who drank sparkling water once
during the entire study.
 
Average Water Consumption
As a part of the study participants were asked to provide an estimate of their daily water
consumption. 3 out the 4 participants reported a daily average intake of over 60 oz of drinking
water.

Water Before, After and During Meals

The biggest finding was that most participants do not start their day with a water. I want to
reserve judgement by I wish I had more probing questions in the diary study to understand this.
Another finding was, that participants did not drink water before bed, and they did not wake up
in the middle of the night to drink water either. 75% of the participants drank water after every
meal. All participants drank water after lunch and dinner.

Other Beverages
Most participants reported that they drank a minimum of two cups of either tea or coffee. One
participant reported drinking an alcoholic beverage and, on another occasion, the same
participant reported drinking diet coke (just once during the study).

Reflections
This was first ever experience in conducting a diary study. I wish there was an easier way to do
this because Paco was not the right way to go. Especially because I think I spent a lot of time
trying to figure out how to make it work. After setting up my study, I realized that participants
were not getting my notifications via, so I had to consider an easier approach. I chose google
docs; I created a separate google doc for each of the participant. After piloting this for a day I
saw great success in the execution of the study and the ease of use for the participants, so I
decided to carry on with google docs approach.

My Experience of Participating in a Diary Study

I participated in 3 diary studies; each one had a different level of involvement. The first study
that I participated in was on Daily Commute Activities. For this study we had some confusion on
day when, where I was asked to use the Paco App. However, my responses were not being
recorded so I was asked to switch to google docs. The questions were fairly simple, and I was
asked to fill out the diary entry twice in a day. I did not get notification on a daily basis to
participate, I just had to setup an alarm to remind myself. The second study that I participated in
was about the consciousness of breath. I am a yogi and I always monitor my breathing and
control it based on the situation. So, this was study was a great reminder to be even more mindful
of the breath. This study was setup on Paco and the notification to fill out the diary were sent
randomly throughout the day. I didn’t face any technical challenges while filling out this diary.
However, I did learn to be more mindful.