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The authors applaud A. S. Green, E. Rafaeli, N. Bolger, P. E. Shrout, and H. T. Reis's (2006) response to one-sided comparisons of paper versus electronic (plastic) diary methods and hope that it will stimulate more balanced considerations of the issues involved. The authors begin by highlighting areas of agreement and disagreement with Green et al. The authors review briefly the broader literature that has compared paper and plastic diaries, noting how recent comparisons have relied on study designs and methods that favor investigators' allegiances. The authors note some sorely needed data for the evaluation of the implications of paper versus plastic for the internal and external validity of research. To facilitate evaluation of the existing literature and assist in the design of future studies, the authors offer a balanced comparison of paper and electronic diary methods across a range of applications. Finally, the authors propose 2 study designs that offer fair comparisons of paper and plastic diary methods.

Action theory proposes that individuals actively shape and then respond to their environments, highlighting the role of stable person characteristics in the development and maintenance of life's interpersonal difficulties. In this study, the authors adopt the action perspective in their examination of predictors of daily interpersonal events among chronic pain patients with rheumatoid arthritis. They probe the extent to which stable symptoms of illness explained between-person variation, and fluctuating symptoms explain day-to-day variation in both positive and negative events. Their evaluation of patients: daily diary reports indicate that between-person differences accounted for more variance in the occurrence of positive events relative to negative events (48% vs. 31%, respectively). Likewise, between-person factors accounted for more variance in appraisals of positive compared to negative events across relationship domains. Both intractable illness symptoms and disability, and daily fluctuations in pain and fatigue, were only weakly related to patients' reports of their interpersonal experiences. Consistent with action theory, these results suggest that stable person characteristics are strongly related to daily stressors and particularly daily positive events in pain patients, but still account for less than 50% of the variance in events and their appraisals. In contrast, elevations in illness-related features, both between individuals and within individuals from day-to-day, are not robust predictors of positive or negative social exchanges. These findings point to the value of capturing the experiences of individuals intensively over time, an approach that can help to elaborate the contributions of both stable factors and circumstance in shaping social contexts in chronic illness. Keywords: action theory; rheumatoid arthritis; chronic pain; interpersonal Events

A study examines how depression is related to reactions to pain among persons suffering from fibromyalgia.

Objective: The purpose of this article is to assess the correspondence between questionnaire reports of dispositional drinking to cope (DTC) and different indices of daily DTC in a sample of [...]

The current study examined the concordance among daily, trait (global retrospective), and time-limited retrospective reports of coping. A sample of 93 adults completed the COPE (C. S. Carver, M. F. Scheier, & J. K. Weintraub, 1989) prior to recording coping with the day's most negative event for 30 consecutive days. At the end of daily data collection, participants recalled to what extent they used each of 16 coping strategies over the past 30 days. Whereas findings indicate generally good concordance between daily and time-limited retrospective reports, concordance between global and daily reports was weak. Only limited evidence was found for systematic individual differences in concordance. Time-limited reports appear to be an adequate, though not ideal, method of determining usual patterns of coping with stress.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether dispositional optimism or pessimism measured with the Life Orientation Test (LOT; Scheier & Carver, 1985) would predict drinking and psychosocial outcomes following alcohol treatment. Participants were 325 alcohol-dependent men and women who received 1 of 3 outpatient treatments as part of Project MATCH. The three treatments were cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT), 12-step facilitation (TSF), and motivational enhancement therapy (MET). General linear models analyses indicated that neither optimism nor pessimism predicted drinking outcomes over 15 months of follow-up. However, pessimism assessed prior to treatment predicted changes in both depression and psychiatric severity scores. Additionally, pessimism interacted with treatment such that patients high in pessimism treated in CBT tended to have higher depression and anger scores across time. Patients low in pessimism treated with MET tended to have better psychosocial outcomes across time.

For decades, coping researchers have used between-person designs to address inherently within-person questions derived from theory and clinical practice. The authors describe recent developments in the use of within-person, process-oriented methods that examine individuals intensively over time. Ongoing studies of stress and alcohol consumption, the effects of depression on adaptational processes, and the temporal dynamics of coping with chronic pain demonstrate that by tracking rapidly fluctuating processes such as mood and coping close to their real-time occurrence, daily process designs offer unique insights into conceptually and clinically challenging questions. Such designs also provide new opportunities to examine the purported mechanisms of therapeutic interventions. Despite its demands on participants and investigators, daily process research offers fresh opportunities to link psychological theory, research, and practice.

Carver et al. propose that expecting a desired outcome is more important than the perception of personal control over that outcome in predicting distress among individuals facing threatening circumstances. They support this hypothesis through an analysis of data from two studies of women with early stage breast cancer. This article turns to the existing empirical literature, to recent theories of adjustment to serious illness, and to the methods employed in the Carver et al. studies to comment on their proposal. The authors conclude that an adequate comparison of how expectancies and control perceptions contribute to the adjustment of individuals in threatening situations will require more attention to the selection of research participants, the appropriate time frame for such studies, and measurement strategies.

The next 3 articles in this issue use multilevel statistical procedures to analyze data collected in daily process studies of (a) stress and coping, (b) binge eating, and (c) chronic pain experience. Important differences in the methods and procedures of these studies illustrate the many options available to investigators and data analysts. This article serves as a preface to help readers who are new to these studies' methodology appreciate their novel contributions to the literature in consulting and clinical psychology. Four frequently asked questions are addressed concerning the design of daily process studies, the distinctive meaning of a within-person finding, the possibility that self-monitoring studies are measurement reactive, and complexities in the use of multilevel statistical procedures for analyzing person-day data sets.

One hundred fifty randomly selected articles published in Journal of Personality from 1970 to 1995 were evaluated with regard to subject population, sampling, research design, dependent measures, statistical methods, methodological difficulty, sample size, manipulation of independent variables (for experimental studies), use of manipulation checks, and gender representation of authors and participants. Our findings support Endler and Speer's (this issue) conclusion that the typical study in personality research continues to use a cross-sectional design, questionnaire measures, and undergraduate participants. Echoing West et al.'s (1992) findings for Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we found that whereas subject recruitment and design implementation appear to be less difficult than they were two decades ago, statistical analyses have become somewhat more complex.

Objective: This study was designed to compare the Timeline Follow-Back (TLFB) to daily and real-time assessments of drinking. Our purpose was to evaluate overall correspondence and day-to-day agreement between these two methods among both problem and moderate drinkers. Method: In Study 1, problem drinkers (n = 20) reported their alcohol consumption daily during 28 days of brief treatment. In Study 2, moderate drinkers (n = 48), recruited from the community, used a palm-top computer to record their drinking for 30 days. In both studies participants completed the TLFB covering the recording period. Results: Participants in Study 1 reported fewer drinking days, fewer drinks per drinking day and fewer total drinks per day on the TLFB, and those in Study 2 reported fewer drinks per drinking day, fewer ounces per drinking day, fewer total drinks per day and fewer total ounces per day. The magnitude of the difference, however, was modest. There was considerable between-person variation in day-to-day correspondence of TLFB and the daily and real-time reports. Neither person characteristics (gender, education and income) nor the distributional characteristics of drinking (including average consumption, variation) predicted concordance between TLFB and real-time reports. Conclusions: The Timeline Follow-Back method captured overall levels of drinking quite well compared to a 28-day daily diary and a 30-day electronic interview. Vast individual differences in day-to-day correspondence suggest that the TLFB may be less useful for detecting patterns of consumption. (J. Stud. Alcohol 59: 447-454, 1998), The Timeline Follow-Back (TLFB) drinking assessment, was evaluated for daily and real-time assessment. Problem drinkers recorded consumption day-to-day and moderate drinkers used a hand-held computer to record their drinking. The study determined that daily and real-time recording of consumption might be a unique methodological approach for examining patterning., The accuracy with which people recall their alcohol consumption is critical to our understanding of the causes, correlates and consequences of alcohol use, abuse and dependence (Babor et al., 1987, [...]

The discovery of benefits from living with adversity has been implicated in psychological well-being in numerous investigations, is pivotal to several prominent theories of cognitive adaptation to threat, and can be predicted by personality differences. This article summarizes the prevalence and adaptive significance of finding benefits from major medical problems, locates the place of benefit-finding in stress and coping theories, and examines how it may be shaped by specific psychological dispositions such as optimism and hope and by broader personality traits such as Extraversion and Openness to Experience. The distinction between beliefs about benefits from adversity (benefit-finding) and the use of such knowledge as a deliberate strategy of coping with the problem (benefit-reminding) is underscored and illustrated by daily process research on coping with chronic pain.