:: Early Child Care and After-School Care ::

Experience sampling allows researchers to collect systematic data about what a person does, thinks and feels during daily life. This methodology measures the participant's location, activity, and affective and cognitive experiences at random moments. It is particularly valuable for eliciting the subjective experiences of the individual interacting in his or her natural environments. The record of daily experiences produced is similar to that recorded in time diaries, but differs in that respondents record their experiences immediately upon having them.

For this study, we collected experience sampling data from 8th grade students enrolled in eight schools in three states. Some of the students attended 21st Century Community Learning Centers programs, some attended other after-school programs, and some did not attend any program. The overall goal of the study was to contrast the experiences of youth who attended community learning center and other after-school programs with the experiences of comparison youth who did not attend the programs. Study participants were asked to wear a watch for one week in the fall and one week in the spring. The watch was programmed to randomly signal the student five times each day the watch was worn. The signals occurred between the after-school and evening hours of 3:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on weekdays, and between 10:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. on weekends.

At each signal, the participants recorded the following information in a daily logbook: (1) time of day, (2) location, (3) social partners, (4) primary and secondary activities, (5) level of motivation and effort (degree of choice in selecting activity, how important the activity was to the student, whether the activity was interesting and challenging, enjoyment of activity, degree of concentration, whether using one's skills, wish to be doing something else-reflected), and (6) emotional states. Participants also recorded whether they were at an after-school program when signaled, and the name of the program.

Open-ended items in the logbooks (activities, locations, and social partners) were coded by the research team. From the logbook data, we constructed numerous variables for data analyses:

Activity: We coded 64 specific activities; examples include homework, academic enrichment, snacks/meals, organized sports, TV, video games, dance lessons, shopping, recreational computer use, and sleeping. Key activities were combined into composite activity categories for analysis.

Social partners: We coded 14 social partner categories, such as program staff, single peer, peer group, sibling, father, other adults. From these data, we created composite scores to represent the youths' social experiences. Example categories include supervised time with peers (time with a friend or friends, child relatives, boyfriend or girlfriend, other kids, brother or sisters, AND an adult), unsupervised time with peers (time with peers AND no adult present was present), and adults only (time with adults, no peers present).

Location: We coded 28 specific locations, such as own bedroom, other inside location at home, instructional space at school, social space at school, friend's house, relative's house, store, outdoors in neighborhood, in a car.

Engagement: Three composite indicators of engagement in activities were created, including flow (high challenge, high use of skills, high concentration), intrinsic motivation(high choice, high enjoyment, high interest, low wish to be doing something else), andimportance (high importance).

Feeling states: We combined data about choice of activity and concentration in the activity, as follows.

High degree of choice in doing an activity / high degree of concentration in that activity (consistent with the feelings of intrinsic motivation and effort that Larson (1999) has posited as facilitative of the development of initiative)
High choice / low concentration (consistent with leisure and relaxation)
Low choice / high concentration (a combination often reported during the school day)
Low choice / low concentration (may occur when adolescents are particularly disengaged)

Emotional states: Three composite emotional states were constructed, including positive emotions (proud, excited, happy, relaxed), negative emotions (scared, worried, sad, angry, stressed), and apathy (bored, lonely)