Participants were recruited through a call for participation on social media (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter) and local parent groups. The survey received 85 responses in total, 42 being parents or guardians of at least one child. 22 were female-identifying, 32 were male-identifying, and 2 identified as non-binary. 29 chose to not disclose their gender. Median age was 39 (x̅ = 41.4, σ = 9.3).
To jog participants’ memory, the survey began by presenting a list of 26 common tracking cases, collected by browsing tracking applications on the Apple and Google App Stores (keywords: “tracking”, “tracker”, “journal”, “logging”) with five freeform fields at the end. For each, participants could select wither they had tracked it manually, automatically, or have wanted to track it (but didn’t) at any point in time. These options were non-exclusive, to account for semi-automatic tracking [1] and different attitides for different time periods. Parents were additionally presented with another 13 parenting-related use cases, with four freeform fields.
Respondents could then provide more details about their selections. There were no further questions for things they selected they track automatically. The full list of questions can be found in Section A.2.
Most participants were experienced trackers, self-tracking a median of 7 things (x̅ = 8.4, σ = 5.3). This did not differ between parents and non-parents, but parents additionally tracked a median of 4 things (x̅ = 4.8, σ = 4.1) about their children. While self-tracking use cases were almost equally split between manual and automatic tracking (median of 4 (x̅ = 5.1, σ = 3.6) vs 3 (x̅ = 3.3, σ = 2.7)) parental tracking was almost exclusively manual with only a median of 0.5 (x̅ = 1.2, σ = 1.9) automatically, indicating perhaps that despite the rise of “baby wearables”[2, 3], parents keeping track of their children’s development is largely still a manual labor of love.
Female-identifying people self-tracked slightly more than male-identifying people: a median of 8.5 things (x̅ = 9.4, σ = 5.1) vs a median of 6 things (x̅ = 7.6, σ = 5.1) respectively. However, when we look at parental tracking, the picture if vastly different: a median of 6 (x̅ = 6.4, σ = 4.6) things tracked by mothers vs a median of only 2.5 (x̅ = 2.9, σ = 2.9) by fathers.
The most popular manually tracked items are shown in Figure A.1 and Figure A.2.
Nearly a quarter (24.71%) of respondents tracked or have wanted to track one or more things not in the list of predefined common cases.
This was similar in the parental tracking set of questions, with 23.81% of parents entering item(s) in the freeform text fields.
It could be argued that this figure was high because the researchers missed certain common cases, but there was little overlap across subjects. Two researchers separately normalized differences in wording, then reconciled the result. Even after aggressive normalization, the only items that appeared more than once were “Books read” (3x), “Social Interactions” (3x), Location (2x), and “Personal expenses” (2x) for self-tracking, and “Teeth (when they come in and fall out)” (2x) for parental tracking.
Examples of unique custom use cases for adults were: water consumption, cleaning, climbing progress, daytime sleepiness, scores on Lumosity and BrainHQ, time spent in Internet rabbit holes, being kinder, stretching sessions, progress in studying a foreign language, breast milk production, travel, groceries bought, yelling instances, prayers/mindfulness, teeth flossing, Aimovig injections.
Examples of unique custom use cases for parental tracking were: tummy time, baths, nail trimming, firsts, relationships, interests and wants, books read, prizes in reward system, accomplishments, funny things said.
Respondent motivations for tracking or wanting to track, broken down by self-tracking and parental tracking use cases
Respondents’ motivations are summarized in Figure A.3. By far the most common reason for self-tracking was knowing thyself: to find patterns in the data and get insights. While this was common for parental tracking as well, it was surpassed by data preservation for posterity. Comparing the tracking subject to others was also a far more popular reason for parental tracking than self-tracking. These differences are consistent with the literature, which finds that parents track primarily to preserve memories and detect developmental delays.[4, 5].
The most common reasons people gave for not tracking things they have wanted to track are shown in Figure 9.2. It is relevant that Lack of suitable tools was by far the most common reason both for self-tracking (36.1%) as well as parental tracking (38.8%). Lack of motivation seemed to be a less common reason in parental tracking, where the primary reasons for not tracking (in addition to lack of tools) were related to the overwhelm that parents feel, consistent with [4].
In 91% of cases, respondents said they would be more likely to record data if it were quick and easy (53.3% much more likely, 37.6% slightly more likely). Parents are even more eager to record data if the capture burden was reduced: Only 2.5% would still not record anything in that case (65% much more likely to record, 32.5% slightly more likely).
The lack of suitable tools we discussed in the previous session became more apparent when we looked at the tools used.
For self-tracking, only half of tracked things are tracked with a widely available app or website. The rest are mostly tracked via spreadsheets (15.2%), documents (12.6%), or even handwriting (10%)
There’s an even higher scarcity of suitable tools for parental tracking. Only 37.5% of things tracked are tracked with a widely available app or website. The rest are tracked via documents (40%), spreadsheets (17.5%), and handwriting (2.5%).
For the question What do you track (or have tracked in the past) either for yourself or other adults (e.g. a partner, a friend, your parents etc)? the 26 common cases presented to participants were (does not include the 5 freeform fields):
These were presented in a matrix, with columns:
Participants could check 0-3 of these per row. We decided against a N/A column to avoid clutter.
This does have the downside that this survey design cannot distinguish between things that do not apply at all (e.g. pregnancy-related things in a person without a uterus) and things for which the participant never had any desire to track.
There was also a short FAQ at the top (answers were collapsed but participants could expand them):
What qualifies as tracking? Tracking is when you (manual) or a piece of software (automatic) records information about an aspect of you or someone else’s life. E.g. checking the back statement every month is not tracking of joint expenses, but if you have a spreadsheet where you record things from these statements, then it is.
What if I track things about my children? Do not include things you’ve tracked about your child(ren), as this is covered in a separate question.
What if someone else tracks these things about me? If someone else tracks things for you (e.g. your partner or your doctor), please do not select that you track these things. Answer about the things you track yourself (either about yourself or other adults), and consider sending them this survey so they can participate too!
What is the difference between automatic and manual tracking? Tracking manually is when data entry is performed by you, e.g. in a journal, document, spreadsheet, or app designed for this purpose. Tracking automatically is the kind of tracking where a device or app does the data entry for you with little to no intervention. Even if you have to approve or start each session manually, it’s still automatic tracking for the purposes of this study if the actual data is produced automatically from device sensors and recorded automatically in an app without you having to enter it somewhere. Certain types of tracking may be a combination of automatic and manual, e.g. you use a sleep tracker that records how long and how deep you sleep, but then you go into the sleep log app and manually add notes about what you dreamed of. In that case, you’d tick both boxes.
Example: If you use a smart blood pressure monitor to record your blood pressure and the monitor automatically records it in its own app, we’d consider it automatic tracking. If you manually go into a health tracker app and enter your blood pressure measurements, we’d consider it manual tracking. If the monitor records it mostly automatically, but sometimes the Bluetooth connection fails and you have to record it manually, you’d tick both boxes.
When do I tick the “I have wanted to track this (but don’t)” box? This means that the item applied to you at some point in your life and you have had a desire, interest, or need to track it, but for whatever reason you did not actually track it.
Participants were also asked “Are Are you a parent or caregiver for any children?” with options:
Those who selected any of the Yes options were also presented with another question, “What have you tracked about the child(ren) in your care, if anything?” with another list of common cases pertaining to parenting (and 4 freeform fields):
There was also a short expandable FAQ about these:
For every item participants selected they had wanted to track (but didn’t) they were presented with a series of follow-up questions:
For each thing participants said they tracked manually, they were presented with the following questions:
Before each block of such questions, participants were given a choice to skip to the end of the survey (the demographics questions). 12/85 did this.
The demographics questions were shown at the end, to eliminate stereotype threat: