Adolescent Diaries Research Articles

Actigraphic Sleep Variability is Associated With Lower Positive Mood in Adolescents

PurposePoor sleep health is associated with lower positive mood in adolescents, and more variable sleep is associated with more negative mood. There is a lack of research on the associations between sleep variability and positive mood in adolescents. We investigated whether several types of sleep variability, measured with actigraphy, were associated with positive mood reported on a daily diary in adolescents. MethodsData were collected from a substudy of the Year 15 wave of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 580; 53% female, mean age ± standard deviation [SD] = 15.4 ± 0.5 years, range 14.7–17.7). Adolescents wore an actigraphy device (M ± SD = 5.6 ± 1.4 nights per adolescent, range: 3–10) and completed daily diaries (M ± SD = 5.5 ± 1.4 days per adolescent, range: 3–9) for ∼1 week, where they rated their levels of happiness and excitement during that day from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely). Happiness and excitement were averaged into “positive mood.” Separate linear regression models assessed whether actigraphy-measured variability of sleep duration, onset, and offset (residual individual standard deviation, riSD), sleep regularity index, social jetlag, and free night catch-up sleep were associated with average positive mood per person. Analyses adjusted for age, birth sex, race/ethnicity, household income, and the primary caregiver's education level. ResultsGreater variability in sleep duration (p = .011, β = −0.11) and lower sleep regularity index (p = .034, β = 0.09) were associated with lower ratings of positive mood. There were no other significant associations (p ≥ .10). DiscussionVariable and irregular sleep are associated with lower levels of positive mood in adolescence, which may increase the risk of poor emotional health in adulthood.

Development of a text message-based headache diary in adolescents and children.

International guidelines recommend diaries in migraine trials for prospective collection of headache symptoms. Studies in other patient populations suggest higher adherence with electronic diaries instead of pen-and-paper. This study examines the feasibility of a text message-based (texting) diary for children and adolescents with headache. This is a secondary analysis of data from a study validating a pediatric scale of treatment expectancy. We developed a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant texting diary collecting headache characteristics, medication use, and disability with 3-5 core daily questions for 4 or 12 weeks depending on headache treatment. Adherence was incentivized. 93 participants consented to the expectancy study. Five participants opted for a paper diary for follow-up. 88 participants chose the texting diary with 28 4-week and 60 12-week participants. Five participants did not complete the enrollment visit. Of those remaining 83, 89% of 4-week and 93% of 12-week participants responded on at least 80% of days. On average, participants fully completed 88% (4-week cohort) and 90% (12-week) of diary entries. Text messages are a promising method for collecting patient-reported data. Adherence was similar to that reported for paper diaries in other pediatric migraine trials, but time-stamped entries ensure real-time data collection.

Exploring the adolescent-self through written and visual diaries

Memories about our childhoods and adolescence may not always be accurate, but they do influence how we position ourselves as adults. In this paper, I assert that written and visual diaries can be used as a way to access the most accurate version of one’s younger years, and thus, they can help one explore their self-narrative and enhance their self-understanding.In this auto-hermeneutic inquiry, I studied the therapeutic potential of exploring my own early diaries and attempted to answer how reviewing one’s early thinking and emotions might influence a person’s current self-identity. In this research, I identified three aspects that enriched my understanding of my adolescence, and hence, my current self. First, the recurring narratives found in my adolescent diaries enhanced my understanding of the way I feel about particular things today. Second, I realized that the narrative I built around my teen self was not actually an accurate representation of my younger self. Third, using my diaries allowed me to identify important correlations between my past experiences and my current self.I conclude that adolescent diaries are one useful way to explore autobiographic memory and self-identity. Realizations drawn from earlier diaries can then be explored further through art therapy.

Development of a Text Message-based Headache Diary in Adolescents and Children (1448)

Development of a Text Message-based Headache Diary in Adolescents and Children (1448)

Hibernating in Havana: Paradoxical Memory in Todos se van and Nunca fui primera dama by Wendy Guerra

Hibernating in Havana: Paradoxical Memory in Todos se van and Nunca fui primera dama by Wendy Guerra Juli A. Kroll Far from being traditional Bildungsromane, the novels Todos se van (2006) and Nunca fui primera dama (2008) by Cuban author Wendy Guerra contribute to the late twentieth-/early twenty-first-century literature in which a dystopian Cuba seeks to combat historical amnesia and anchor a drifting national imagination. Participants in this wave of dystopian fiction, novels like La nada cotidiana by Zoé Valdés (1995), La novela de mi vida by Leonardo Padura (2002), Otras plegarias atendidas by Mylene Fernández Pintado (2003) and Muerte de Nadie by Arturo Arango (2004) express “la indigencia y la indignidad” (Sklodowska 33) of the Special Period and/or the disenchantment that many of the grandchildren of the Revolution felt toward Cuba’s socialist project.1 In the case of Todos se van, protagonist Nieve Guerra intuits the creeping paralysis that awaits her when she comments, “A la deriva viajo poco a poco hasta la inmovilidad total” (285). Nadia Guerra, the main character from Nunca fui primera dama, for her part, affims that: “El día en que perdemos la memoria viajamos a la deriva” (130).2 Both novels recreate Havana’s stultifying atmosphere in which female characters subsist, trapped between “lo obligatorio y lo prohibido” (Todos se van 137) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Like insects trapped in tree resin, they inhabit decades in which gestures of memory constitute Parkinsonian movement—vibrations that mimic progress. Influenced by the instability of personal and historical memory, as well as by state prohibitions against acts of dissident memory, the autobiographical element of the [End Page 65] Alzheimer’s diagnosis that Guerra’s mother receives and the dissolution of the memory of female collaborators in national history, Guerra’s novels show that the would-be subject’s struggles congeal, eventually, into nearly complete hibernation and immobility. Guerra demonstrates paradoxical attempts to consecrate historical and personal events to memory in both novels; Todos se van employs elements of the anti-Künstlerroman, in which the narrator’s artistic development is incomplete, and she fails to find a readership for her work within the narrative diegesis. With Nunca fui primera dama, the powerful metaphor of Havana as a museum and mausoleum provides the basis for examining a necrotic national memory and for exploring the city as a democratized, heterotopic feminist palimpsest. Guerra’s first two novels, the award-winning Todos se van (Premio de Novela Bruguera) and Nunca fui primera dama established the author’s international credentials as a novelist who critiques authoritarian Cuba from within. Both novels’ diegetic worlds revolve around women’s experiences in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century in Cuba. Through the childhood and adolescent diaries of an abused girl (Todos se van) and radio transmissions and personal stories from three marginalized women (Nunca fui primera dama), the novels give voice to national amnesia and hibernating historical memory from key eras of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Cuba. The works depict a nation frozen by fear and involuntary consensus during decisive moments of the post-Revolutionary period and of the author’s childhood. The result is that these novels, the anti-Künstlerroman Todos se van, and the ambulatory, necropolis-based Nunca fui primera dama, ask: how does voluntary forgetting constitute a response to unfulfilled utopias, and how do we address the gaps in national memory? They make us complicit in the comforting act of constructing the novel’s readership as an exegetic activity. The study at hand argues that Guerra’s novels are significant expressions of the current generation’s need to interact with groundbreaking, feminist, post-Revolutionary, literary perspectives on Cuban identity. Responding to this need, Todos se van and Nunca fui primera dama dissect and partially re-assemble elements of Cuban identity from the perspective of feminist and resident exiles. The novels are grounded in Cuba’s literary history, as they converse with the literature of Cuban insularity and the heritage of testimonial literature by women. By dismantling insularity and patriarchal, Revolutionary discourse, I demonstrate that Todos se van uses...

Application of the Impulsive Aggression Diary in Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Objective: Impulsive aggression (IA) is a maladaptive form of aggressive behavior that is an associated feature of neuropsychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As one of the most common forms of aggressive behavior, IA is a serious clinical concern. Recognition, monitoring, and management of IA symptoms are complicated by the lack of IA-specific psychometric instruments and evidence-based treatments. A recently developed electronic observer-reported outcome instrument has been validated in children for monitoring the frequency of 15 IA-related behaviors in the context of ADHD. This study seeks to first determine if the behaviors included in the pediatric IA diary are applicable to adolescents with ADHD, and second, compare the reliability of adolescent versus parent reporters. Methods: We evaluated the utility of the pediatric IA diary through concept elicitation and cognitive interviews with 17 pairs of parents and adolescents (aged 13-17 years) with IA and ADHD, supplemented with 15 new behaviors potentially applicable to adolescents. Results: The behaviors most frequently reported by adolescents included arguing (93.8%), raising their voice/shouting/yelling (93.8%), hitting others (87.5%), slamming (87.5%), pushing/shoving (81.3%), breaking (75.0%), fighting (75.0%), throwing (75.0%), and cursing (68.8%). The behaviors most commonly reported by parents included raising their voice/shouting/yelling (94.1%), arguing (88.2%), being disrespectful/mean/rude (88.2%), slamming (88.2%), throwing (88.2%), cursing (82.4%), hitting others (82.4%), pushing/shoving (82.4%), breaking (76.5%), name-calling (76.5%), and threatening (70.6%). Of all commonly reported behaviors, only being "disrespectful/mean/rude" and "breaking" are not part of the pediatric IA diary, likely due to the imprecision of these terms. No significant usability issues were found for the IA diary device. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the 15-item pediatric IA diary should be applicable to adolescent populations to appropriately characterize IA behaviors in individuals with ADHD. Furthermore, this study indicated that parents may be more reliable reporters of IA behavior than adolescents.

How Do Diaries Begin? The Narrative Rites of Adolescent Diaries in Hungary

This paper examines the narrative tropes of Hungarian adolescent diaries written during and after World War II, primarily focusing on the rhetorical forms of beginning a diary that fall into two categories characteristic of adolescent diary-writing – beginning with an introduction describing the author and their environment, or beginning with a memoir in which the author summarizes the most important events of the period between their birth and the start of the diary. The paper also discusses how adolescents personified their diary books and intended those for their adult selves in the course of diary-writing as dialogue.

Construct validity of a multidimensional electronic pain diary for adolescents with arthritis

The aim of this study was to evaluate the construct validity and feasibility of a multidimensional electronic pain diary (e-Ouch©) in adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Two descriptive studies with repeated measures were conducted between January and December 2005. Participants were drawn from a large metropolitan rheumatology clinic in a university affiliated pediatric tertiary care centre. In Study 1, 76 adolescents with active arthritis recorded their pain three times a day for 2 weeks using the e-Ouch©. In Study 2, 36 adolescents recorded their pain three times a day for 1 week before and 2 weeks after joint injections. Adolescents in both studies completed multiple measures to determine the construct validity and feasibility of the e-Ouch©. Adolescents reported mild levels of pain intensity, unpleasantness, and interference as well as stiffness, and mild to moderate levels of fatigue. e-Ouch© average weekly pain unpleasantness and interference scores were higher in adolescents with higher pain intensity scores. Correlations between average weekly pain ratings on the e-Ouch© and scores from: (a) recalled least, average and worst weekly pain, (b) health-related quality of life and pain coping, and (c) disease activity were as predicted. Pain ratings were significantly lower following joint injections with effect sizes in the low to moderate and moderate to high ranges at the first and second week post-injection, respectively. These findings provide evidence of the construct validity and feasibility of the e-Ouch© electronic diary in adolescents with JIA. Use of real-time data capture approaches should be considered in future studies of chronic arthritis.

E-Ouch: Usability Testing of an Electronic Chronic Pain Diary for Adolescents With Arthritis

The aim of this study was to evaluate the usability of the e-Ouch electronic chronic pain diary in adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. A qualitative usability testing approach with semistructured, audiotaped interviews with two iterative cycles was used. A purposive sample of 10 adolescents per cycle was drawn from a rheumatology clinic in a university-affiliated pediatric tertiary care center. Participants were provided with a brief demonstration of the diary and then asked to use the diary "thinking aloud" to record the pain they experienced: (1) when they woke up that morning, (2) during that afternoon, and (3) from the previous evening. Adolescents were then asked a series of open-ended questions addressing ease of use of the diary. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to generate categories and emerging themes from interview data. All of the adolescents stated the e-Ouch diary was very easy to learn, use, and understand and was satisfying to complete. Participants took less than 9 minutes to complete all three of the diary entries with minimal errors. The usability evaluation revealed aspects of the interface that were suboptimal (eg, VAS slider) and impeded the performance of certain tasks. Adolescents generated ideas on how the diary interface could be improved. A multifaceted usability approach provided important insight regarding the use of technology by adolescents with arthritis and, more specifically, for understanding how adolescents can more effectively use an electronic chronic pain diary.

Validation of the PDPAR as an Adolescent Diary: Effect of Accelerometer Cut Points

To evaluate the validity of the Previous Day Physical Activity Recall (PDPAR) as a physical activity diary in adolescents using two accelerometer intensity classifications. One hundred eighth graders (47 boys, 53 girls) used the PDPAR as a daily diary and wore MTI accelerometers for four consecutive days. Measured time spent in moderate (> or = 3 METs) and vigorous (> or = 6 METs) activity was based on two published MTI cut-point limits (that of Freedson et al./Trost et al. and that of Puyau et al.). Spearman rank order correlations and Bland-Altman plots were used to examine agreement between MTI and PDPAR diary estimates of activity. MTI estimates of mean minutes per day of total moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were 65.2 (+/-43.2) using the Freedson et al./Trost et al. cutoffs and 17.5 (+/-18.5) using those of Puyau et al., while students self-reported 105.1 (+/-80.1) min.d(-1). Significant relationships were observed between the diary and MTI for total MVPA using either the Freedson et al./Trost et al. (r = 0.42) or Puyau et al. (r = 0.41) cutoff as well as raw counts (r = 0.44). Plots showed reasonable agreement between the diary and Freedson et al./Trost et al. MTI estimates of MVPA for daily totals of < or = 60 min, but the Puyau et al. estimates were consistently lower. Diaries overestimated activity as time increased when compared to either MTI cut point, especially on vigorous activity. Time estimates of MVPA differed by assessment tool, but diary estimates showed adequate association with the MTI. Diaries reflected intensity-specific activity, corresponding most closely with the Freedson et al./Trost et al. classification of moderate, but substantially overestimated vigorous activity regardless of cut-point method. This is likely due to the measurement characteristics of the PDPAR, which classifies activities in 30-min blocks, as well as the nature of common activities in which high levels of intensity are not sustained.

The Body in Adolescent Diaries

The role of the body and its functions in the psychic life of the individual has occupied a central place in psychoanalytic thinking and writing. Developmentally, the body and the ego as a psychic organization have an integral, mutual relationship which becomes particularly important during adolescence, when the body matures physically while at the same time cognition, self-reflection, and social relations develop. This contribution presents results of the content analyses, focusing on the body, of 40 diaries written by twenty women during their adolescent years, compared with Karen Horney's adolescent diaries. In contrary to these diaries of the other young women, Karen Horney's adolescent diaries lack a focus on the body. Instead, idealized relationships with teachers are frequently mentioned. Only in the last diary, written at the transition to young adulthood, is the body, with a focus on sexual relations, more prominent. This discrepancy between Horney and female age-mates in normative samples is noteworthy. It is discussed here with emphasis on theoretical approaches about the body in adolescence in psychoanalysis, the importance of body and sexuality in Karen Horney's later life, Horney's contributions to female psychoanalysis, and her relationship with her father.

Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman (review)

Reviewed by: Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman Hollace Ava Weiner (bio) Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman, by Helen Jacobus Apte, edited and with essays by Marcus D. Rosenbaum. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1998, 222 pp., $55.00 hardcover, $17.95 paper. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Ticket buyers at the Mayland Fair. Spruce Pine, North Carolina, ca. 1934. Photo by Bayard Wootten. (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill). Although written for an audience of one, personal diaries are a literary genre of enduring fascination. Witness the popularity of the adolescent diary of Anne Frank (1942), the decoded diaries of Samuel Pepys (1606–1669), and the feminist diaries of Anaïs Nin (1931–1974 ). A diary’s candor is generally unquestioned. Its partiality intrigues. Its secretive intent awakens voyeuristic curiosity. Composed without plot, rigid form, or revisions, a diary often surprises with its compelling pace, historic detail, and insights into past and present. Its theme of self in relation to society often resounds with relevancy regardless of era. Helen Jacobus Apte (1886–1946), begins her diary as a blissful, 22-year-old bride. The year is 1909. Helen, an Atlanta woman raised in the Victorian age and maturing in modern times, has had little formal schooling. Self-educated, she often consumes a book a day and quotes from classical and popular sources as she confides her thoughts to paper. As the spouse of a white-collar worker who manages a Tampa cigar factory and later operates a Miami canning enterprise, Helen experiences the upheaval of labor-management conflicts, a “genteel poverty” when bankruptcy nears, and the optimism washed across America by Franklin Roosevelt’s election. On a more personal level, Helen modestly describes her sexual libido. She writes, “A woman is ashamed to show passion, . . . afraid she will fall in her husband’s estimation, or in her own. . . . I find it hard to give in and act as I feel.” She hints at flirtations with new and old beaus and discusses The Sexual Life by Dr. Charles Malchow, a proctologist who was the Kinsey of his day. She yearns for motherhood, alluding to “my little unborn dream children.” Sadly, her first pregnancy ends in miscarriage. Her second results in an only child, a daughter who disappoints for being practical rather than creative like her mother. Helen had expected to live through her children, an idealized notion she realizes through her first grandchild. [End Page 189] Helen’s ruminations and disappointments presage the feminist philosophies that flower in Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) half a century later. Her unfulfilled dream is to become a professional writer. Indeed, her diary demonstrates the fluent pen and colorful language requisite to achieve that goal. Helen, however, puts herself down as “untrained,” asks “What am I fitted for?” and confesses that she is “ashamed to see my life slipping away by doing nothing.” When business reversals force Helen to move into her in-laws’ home, she has scant time for her diary and yearns for solitude and space, the room of one’s own that Virginia Woolf (1929) would turn into feminist cliché. Frail health, which forced Helen to drop out of school at age fourteen, follows her throughout adulthood, and descriptions of physical ailments filter the diary. Unspoken, but just as recurrent, is evidence of life-long depression—“Blues,” she calls it. “Always there is that vague unrest, that faint nostalgia—for what? I don’t even know.” Helen’s diary was discovered in 1995 by her grandson, Marcus Rosenbaum, a Washington, D.C., journalist who has lovingly edited and annotated the journal of the grandmother who died before his birth. In nine essays interlacing the text, Rosenbaum explains references to family and current events such as the 1910 cigar strike and the boxing defeat of the Great White Hope. He adds social context with enlightening research on infant and maternal mortality, as well as commentary about “Race and Responsibility” and being “Jewish in the South.” Appendices include Helen’s one published magazine article; a partial list of books she read and...

THE DIARY OF ALEXANDER VAN GOLDTSTEIN (1801‐1808): AN EARLY “ADOLESCENT DIARY∗

In the early “adolescent diary” of Alexander van Goldtstein a number of general characteristics of this life phase are clearly described. In the socio‐cultural sphere, there are the pursuit of intellectual autonomy, breaking loose from and conflicts with parents, striving for intimacy outside the family, and the choice of a profession. What makes the diary unique is its frankness, its introspective character, and the melancholy moods of the author. In many ways Alexander's adolescence did not have the expected outcome, i.e. a mature personality, but it certainly produced an important egodocument. ∗∗Translation by Gerard T. Moran.

Affect-Cognition Relationships in Adolescent Diaries: The Case of Anne Frank

The adolescent diary of Anne Frank was examined for evidence of changes in emotional expression (measured by density of categories of emotion), in cognitive level, and in the relation between the two. Increases in emotional density lasting for several days preceded major shifts in cognitive level from an absence of abstract reasoning to absolute, absolute/relativistic, relativistic, and emerging dialectical reasoning. The emotional peaks were associated with normative issues such as autonomy from parents, menarche, and peer relations. In contrast to the results of short-term studies that claim to show that emotion has no role or an oppositional role in cognitive development, results of this psychobiographical study suggest that passion precedes and may facilitate the development of abstract thought during the adolescent period.

The diaries of adolescent girls

Notwithstanding the popularity of The Diary of Adrian Mole, there does not seem to be much evidence for the fact that large numbers of adolescent boys keep diaries or journals. Certainly, it is a fact that there are fewer published boys diaries than published girls diaries, which is the reverse of case of published men's versus women's diaries. Why is it that the genre, at least at the adolescent age level, seems to be a predominately female form? First and foremost, it seems to be a matter of socialization. Men view writing as instrumental, whereas women view it as expressive, and this point of view is formed in adolescence. Boys are sent out to participate actively in work or sports. Society has long defined the female sphere as that of the home and family; women thus have the right to forge the links of communications that hold families together. This includes extensive correspondence as well as the keeping of diaries and memoirs, which frequently serve as genealogical and historical records for the family. Also, the tradition well into the nineteenth century was to educate the girls at home. Since they were not allowed out into the world, what were they to write about but the affairs of their daily lives and the romantic dreams and yearnings they experienced as they grew from girlhood to womanhood. For both these reasons it has always been “all right” for girls to sit quietly and scribble in a book. One of the exceptions, however, and perhaps it is an illuminating exception, was the eminent psycho-analyst C.G. Jung. He not only kept adolescent diaries, but kept them for the same reasons most adolescent girls give for doing so. Jung kept his diary as the one place where he could indulge in the expression, exploration and affirmation of self. He considered his journal a private place where he could express himself freely, without fear of comment or interference from others. But Jung is the exception that proves the rule. In an informal survey of some twenty to thirty people studying women's personal chronicles, all agreed that more girls than boys do keep diaries, but the reason for this seemed somewhat elusive. A man, when queried, remembered that a grandfather had kept a diary—a document that was regarded by the family with some pride; it was an account of some kind of trip of exploration. One woman knew of two teen-age boys who had been persuaded to keep diaries by their mother—but it was today, in the 1980s atmosphere where boys are being socialized to become more responsive, caring and expressive individuals. The typical reaction is that recounted by another woman who had tried to get her son to keep a diary. His disdain was total: “Diaries are sissy things.”