Investigating the Self-Tracking use for Mental Wellness of New Parents
Abstract
New parents often experience significant stress as they take on new roles and responsibilities. Personal informatics practices have increasingly gained attention as they support various aspects of wellness of individuals by providing data-driven self-insights. While several PI systems have been proposed to support mental wellness of individuals not only by providing self-knowledge but also by helping individuals deal with negative emotions, few studies investigated how parenting stress can be managed through PI practices. In this paper, I set out to investigate how new parents make use of flexible self-tracking practices in the context of stress management. The findings of this study indicate that flexible self-tracking practices enable individuals to develop self-knowledge as well as to better communicate with their spouses through data. Based on the findings, I discuss how the self-tracking experiences for the mental wellness of parents can be better designed and provide some considerations for future research and design for parenting stress management.
Degree
M.Sc.
Advisors
Toombs, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Clinical psychology|Individual & family studies|Psychology|Social psychology
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