Audio Diaries: A Novel Method for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene-Related Maternal Stress Research

Previous studies have identified both physical and psychosocial forms of stress among newly married women due to inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) access. However, methodologies used to identify stress have relied on surveys and interviews, which have limitations for eliciting situated information regarding stress. Prior public health studies indicate that, together with other qualitative methods, audio diaries provide rich data sets of participants’ everyday practices, and their interactions with their physical and social environment. In this research, our interdisciplinary team collaborated to explore the feasibility of making audio diary recordings from prompts in a rural, Indian context where many women are illiterate. Three pregnant women living in rural Karnataka (India) were trained on the prompts and audio recorders, and were asked to make audio entries over two weeks. Midterm and exit interviews were used to ascertain women’s thoughts and experiences making audio diary entries. Each woman successfully recorded, on average, 27 minutes per week, demonstrating the feasibility of audio diaries in rural India. While the recruitment and training process was labor intensive and required follow-up visits, trust-building between participants and researchers over time facilitated discussions about the contextual and experiential details of making recordings that will improve data collection through this method. We concluded that when used with other qualitative methods, audio diaries offer a unique opportunity to collect participants’ practices, feelings, reflections, and interactions with their physical and social environment in real time.