Sydney Baumert Tappy, “Psychosocial Dimensions of Leisure Stress Coping: Feasibility of Compliance with Electronic Diary Sampling”
Mentor: Marcellus Merritt, Psychology, Letters & Science (College of)
Poster #54
Engagement in favored leisure (i.e., self-enriching behavioral pursuits like painting or golfing that occur during non-work hours) is uniquely beneficial for healthy outcomes like positive moods, interest, less stress, and lower heart rates (HRs) at the moment, plus better nighttime sleep quality. Still, we know less about how leisure works for daily health and well-being. So, the main aim is to establish the feasibility of identifying relevant psychosocial dimensions of preferred leisure activities over ten straight days, using an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach, while also tracking daily physical activity (PA) and nightly sleep time. Our participants included mostly healthy, college-aged students (18-40) from differing ethnic and gender identities who completed a 10-day electronic diary assessment of leisure dimensions, mood, and health behavioral measures with continuous monitoring of, HR, PA, and sleep time. Each participant answered four diary samples along with an awakening survey each day of the study and wore a FitBit device to track HR, PA, and sleep. Data collection is currently complete for 18 participants and we plan to complete 30 participants by the end of spring. The key criteria for expected results for feasibility include positive feedback and consistent compliance with EMA survey data entry within and between each day. Currently, we have established consistent compliance with EMA survey data entry [overall (89.44%), per day (81% – 97%), per participant (60% – 100%)]. For the HR, PA, and sleep monitoring, we expect wear adherence will not be a burden and any unexpected issues with the data collection will offer a wide range of relevant data over the ten-day EMA study period. After establishing compliance, we will be able to not only reliably tap the presence of leisure activity in an EMA context but also account for related leisure dimensions over time and social context.