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Concern has been raised about the lack of participant compliance in diary studies that use paper-and-pencil as opposed to electronic formats. Three studies explored the magnitude of compliance problems and their effects on data quality. Study 1 used random signals to elicit diary reports and found close matches to self-reported completion times, matches that could not plausibly have been fabricated. Studies 2 and 3 examined the psychometric and statistical equivalence of data obtained with paper versus electronic formats. With minor exceptions, both methods yielded data that were equivalent psychometrically and in patterns of findings. These results serve to at least partially mollify concern about the validity of paper diary methods.

This commentary discusses 4 issues relevant to interpretation of A. S. Green, E. Rafaeli, N. Bolger, P. E. Shrout, and H. T. Reis's (2006) article: (a) Self-reported compliance in medical settings has generally been substantially higher than verified compliance, suggesting that this is not a rare phenomenon; (b) none of the studies reported in Green et al. explicitly verified paper diary compliance; (c) the impact of participant motivation on diary compliance is unknown, and it may be difficult for researchers to accurately assess it in their own studies; and (d) without objective verification of diary compliance, analysis of the effects of noncompliance on data quality is difficult to interpret. The authors conclude that compliance in paper diaries and the effects of noncompliance on data quality are still unsettled issues.