Adapting the daily inventory of stressful events for SMS delivery: Recommendations for research

The everyday impacts of stressful experiences lead to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and mental illness. The Daily Inventory of Stressful Events (DISE) is a widely used measure of daily stressors. The DISE’s popularity is based on its accepted validity and the detailed information it provides researchers. However, the DISE relies on interviews conducted one-on-one with participants over several days and, as such, presents a high burden to both participants and researchers. Thus, many researchers have opted to simplify the measure by substituting the interview with a battery of survey questions. For a feasibility study addressing dementia caregiver stress and self-care, this paper aims to examine the lessons learned from an adaptation delivered via phone text messages. While the adaptation was used to reduce participant and researcher burden, it still provides high-quality information about the variability in daily stressors experienced by participants. However, the quality of the data collected was hindered by several design choices made in the adaptions that limited the utility of the data. As such, this paper provides recommendations for enhancing the utility of mobile phone text-based delivery of both the DISE and other measures and highlights the need for further validity work on such adaptations.