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Introduction
The rapid changes in workforce demographics during the last 30 years make the study of the work-family interface a particularly important area of enquiry and consequently there has been a growing interest in the dynamics of work and family domains ([16] Greenhaus, 2008). With an increasing number of dual-career couples raising a family, and more families having the simultaneous demands of child care and eldercare ([33] Saltzstein et al. , 2001), role pressures are also increasing, with the majority of employees facing conflicts between work demands, personal and family responsibilities on a daily basis, the potential detrimental effects of which have been well documented (e.g. [2] Allen et al. , 2000; [37] van Steenbergen and Ellemers, 2009).
Diaries are increasingly recognised as a valuable method in organisational and management research ([36] van Erde et al. , 2005). They offer the advantage of immediacy ([34] Symon, 2004), enabling recent events to be recalled in sufficient detail to afford new insights into complex phenomena ([30] Poppleton et al. , 2008). Diaries have the ability to capture the particulars of experience in a way that is not possible using traditional designs and permit the examination of reported events and experiences in their natural, spontaneous context ([32] Reis, 1994), therefore offsetting some of the problems with retrospective accounts ([5] Bower, 1981). Diary studies seem particularly suitable to investigate the work-family interface as both the work and family domains are dynamic, changing daily ([7] Butler et al. , 2005; [38] Williams and Alliger, 1994). Therefore a method with the ability to capture this dynamism is important, allowing a picture to be built up of the types of issues that are raised on a daily basis. Despite this, qualitative diaries have rarely been used in work-family research. General discussions of the applications of diary methods have previously been reported (e.g. [4] Bolger et al. , 2003) but no previous paper has focused specifically on the benefits of, and methodological issues surrounding, the application of qualitative diaries to exploring the work-family interface.
The aim of this paper is to explore the benefits of, and difficulties with, the use of qualitative diary studies, particularly in relation to the study of work and family. In doing this it will demonstrate how the...