Monitoring daily well-being and meaning-making tendencies among adult child working dementia caregivers: validating an experience sampling study protocol

BACKGROUND: Although the experience sampling method offers advantages for gerontological research, it has seldom been applied to examine well-being and meaning-making tendencies among adult children working caregivers of parents with dementia and thus lacks empirical support for such applications. In response, we aimed to validate the proposed protocol’s participation status, feasibility, usability, and ecological validity. METHODS: For 15 consecutive days, 100 adult child working dementia caregivers participated in our study via web-based assessments on their digital devices. The protocol was first adjusted based on a series of pilot interviews with eight volunteer dementia caregivers. Participants’ compliance and preferred times for activities along with the protocol’s feasibility, usability, and ecological validity were evaluated in a follow-up session with all participants. RESULTS: The protocol was adjusted in light of recruitment details, user interfaces, the reminder mechanism, and reference time for assessments. The general compliance rate was 93.3%. Preference times for assessments of work (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.), care (6–8 p.m.), and personal activities (7–10 p.m.) were identified. The protocol was generally considered to be feasible and easy to use, and ecological validity analysis indicated that the collected data adequately represented real-world data. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides empirical evidence to support an innovative protocol and evaluate its implementation so that future studies using it can better investigate the relationship between meaning-making tendencies and well-being among adult child working caregivers for parents with dementia.