Examining stress in adolescents' daily lives: Feasibility of triadic paradigms

How adolescents and their parents cope with adolescent stress is relevant for child well-being. (In)congruencies between parent and child perceptions of child stress may be important sources of information for understanding family functioning. However, research assessing the occurrence of stressful events in adolescents' daily lives from the perspective of both adolescents and their parents is lacking, likely because this type of research comes with numerous challenges. Therefore, this pilot study examined the feasibility of two different paradigms, daily diary and the experience sampling method (ESM), for triadic (child-mother-father) assessment of adolescent stress in daily life. Twenty family triads participated either in the diary paradigm (receiving one survey per day) or the ESM paradigm (receiving multiple surveys per day). Results indicated that both paradigms seemed doable to participants in terms of experienced burden, and individual compliance to the paradigms was sufficient. The absolute number of reported stressors was similar across paradigms. In addition, both paradigms captured convergence and divergence in the family members' reports of adolescent stress and between- and within-family differences therein. However, diary participants experienced lower burden and missed relatively less assessments (higher individual and triadic compliance) than ESM participants, suggesting higher data quality. In all, these findings suggest that although both paradigms may be feasible, a diary paradigm may be preferred to capture triadic family reports of adolescent stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).