Feasibility of a Novel Open Question Design to Assess Shared Dyadic Events in Daily Life: A Daily Diary Study

In dyadic daily life research, one is interested in how dyads navigate daily life events. A challenge in such research is how to make sure that dyad members report on the same events. We propose a novel open question design in which one dyad partner concisely describes an event; afterwards this description is automatically sent to the other partner by the data collection software. We tested the feasibility of this novel design in a three‐week daily diary study in 107 romantic couples. Each day, one partner was asked to concisely describe the most negative event of that day that involved both partners and to rate the negativity of this event on a 0–100 scale. Next, the other partner was prompted with this event description and asked to rate recognition and their experienced negativity. The couple‐wise compliance (i.e., both partners completed the diary) was high ( M  = 89%). Partners recognized 97% of the events described by their partner. The experience of the chosen events was moderately negative with a higher intensity for the senders ( M  = 41.10) than for the receivers ( M  = 32.98). Overall, our findings demonstrate the feasibility of this method to report on shared daily life events.