Families Under the Microscope: Repeated Sampling of Perceptions, Experiences, Biology, and Behavior

Abstract

Questionnaires and laboratory observations have become so engrained in our research literature that it is easy to forget that neither family members' evaluations nor their behavior in situations structured by an investigator are necessarily the phenomena of interest. However, the study of life as it is actually lived is becoming more prominent in research on families. The

The Application of Intensive Longitudinal Methods to Investigate Change: Stimulating the Field of Applied Family Research

“…Family researchers have begun applying ILM to basic family research (for a recent review see Repetti, Reynolds & Sears, 2015). Studies have reported good compliance and feasibility of ILM with a variety of samples including with parents and children; for example, a 56-day (two-month) protocol of five-minute daily diaries was feasible for parents and their 8–13 year olds (Robles, Reynolds, Repetti, & Chung, 2013).…”

“…The number and frequency of assessments in intensive repeated measures studies calls for frequent introspection and recall, which could result in participant reactivity (Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015; Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013). Reactivity results to the extent that participants are influenced by their own increased attention to and evaluation of the assessed constructs and respond by changing their behavior—such as decreasing or increasing the number of “events” they experience in event-contingent designs, or attempting to enact more personally acceptable behavior.…”

“…In addition, although ILM can be perceived as unintrusive, the timing and frequency of data collection may cause significant participant burden, which may result in issues with compliance, fatigue, or drop-out (Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015; Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013). In device-contingent and interval-contingent designs, time-stamping completed responses allows researchers to evaluate participant compliance with the assessment protocol; on-time completion rates are usually acceptable in these designs especially with additional incentives and other strategies to increase compliance, but compliance is difficult to determine in event-contingent designs because event occurrence often cannot be verified when surveys are not completed.…”

“…Modeling system processes is a promising avenue for uncovering developmental and intervention change processes in the family because new patterns of interaction may emerge, and this emergence can be modeled at the level of individual interactions over time (Fosco, Bumbarger, Bamberger, & Van Ryzin, 2015; Granic, Dishion, & Hollenstein, 2003; Schermerhorn & Cummings, 2008). This can be done with ILM (Larson & Almeida, 1999; Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015) to provide a rich dynamic picture of the family change process (Shiffman, Stone, & Hufford, 2008). In the ecocultural framework, everyday activities and routines both carry cultural meaning and are the natural units of experience for family members (Weisner, 2002).…”

Examining inter-family differences in intra-family (parent–adolescent) dynamics using grid-sequence analysis.

“…These methods are useful because they capture family interactions, engage measurement proximal to the phenomena of interest (e.g., reduce recall bias), and provide for detailed study of inter-family differences in intra-family associations (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003; Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015). …”