DIARIES - WHO KEEPS THEM AND WHY

Directed diary keeping is an important method of gathering data for va rious therapeutic and research purposes. Little information, however, has been collected on spontaneously kept diaries. A questionnaire rela ting to personal diary keeping and five personality inventories were a dministered to 101 undergraduates. Analysis suggested that women keep diaries more often and at an earlier age than men. Also, information r egarding diary content and reasons for starting and stopping a diary a re discussed. Surprisingly, scores on personality inventories were not significantly different for respondents who had kept a diary than sco res for those who had not.