Those Days When People Are Creative: Diary Methods in Creativity Research

Abstract

Quantitative diary studies have been increasingly popular in various fields of psychology, mainly in social, developmental, and health psychology. The crucial strength of dairy research is that it relies on less recall than surveys and reduces retrospective biases. Moreover, it offers to examine the day-to-day dynamics of changes at both within- and between-person levels. Diary methodology seems promising for creativity research; it allows investigating cognitive, physiological, emotional, behavioral and social predictors of creative activities and self-perceptions in a natural context. In this chapter, I focus on several methodological issues related to the diary method in creativity research. I review various diary protocols, formats, and technological solutions to designing diary studies. Moreover, I suggest that collecting data with the micro-longitudinal approach and using multilevel modeling procedures is particularly promising for investigating patterns in social creativity research.