Boredom in parenthood, experience sampling study preregistration
Creators: name: Artak, Christine Tonne
name: Pfattheicher, Stefan
name: Pirla, Sergio
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: In this experience sampling study we are collecting data on participants experience of boredom during parenting. To make it possible to examine the relationship between parents' experience of boredom and potentially related variables we are additionally collecting data on a series of measures listed in this preregistration. 


MEASURES INCLUDED
Beck’s Depression Inventory short form, BDI-SF, Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, &amp; Erbaugh,1961
General Anxiety Disorder, GAD-7 Spitzer, Kroenke, Williams, Löw, 2006
Perceived stress scale 4, PSS-4, Cohen, Kamarck, &amp; Mermelstein, 1983
Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire Short form, CERQ-short, Garnefski &amp; Kraaij, 2006
The Three-Item Loneliness scale, Hughes, Waite, Hawkley, &amp; Cacioppo, 2004
The child adjustment and parent efficacy scale, CAPES, Morawska &amp; Sanders, 2010
Assessment of Parenting Tool, APT Domain-General (APT-DG) subscale, Moran, Polanin, Evenson, Troutman, Franklin, 2016
The Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale, CTSCP, Strauss et al., 1998
The Parental Stress Scale, Berry &amp; Jones, 1995
Guilt About Parenting Scale, GAPS, with the added question of guilt about boredom, Haslam, Filus, &amp; Finch, 2020
Basic emotions, Ekman, 1999
Short Boredom Proneness Scale, SBPS, Struk et al., 2017
HEXACO-60; Ashton &amp; Lee, 2009
The Short Dark Tetrad, SD4; Paulhus et al., 2021
DIAMONDS, S8, Rauthmann &amp; Sherman, 2015

Items created for the purpose of this study: 
'My job is often satisfying'
'I often find my job meaningful and purposeful.'
'I often find my attention slipping when I am working.'
'I often find my job boring,'
'My job is characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences.'
'My work/life balance is satisfactory.'
'I find that co-parenting is sometimes a source of conflict.'
'I am the primary caretaker of my children.'
'I have a lot of support for the daily chores of parenthood.'
'Spending time with my children is often satisfying.'
'I often find spending time with my children to be meaningful or satisfactory.'
'Spending time with my children is characterized by a variety of interesting and perspective-changing experiences.'
'I often find my attention slipping when I'm spending time with my children.'
'I often find spending time with my children is boring.'
'The balance between my time spend parenting and other, valued activities in life is satisfactory.'
'My child seems to be bored often.'
'I often find my partner boring.'
'I am bored with my relationship.'
'I am satisfied with my relationship.'
'Being a parent often makes having a romantic relationship more challenging.'
'I feel like my partner shares the parenting responsibilities with me.'
Experienced closeness to current companions: 
'How close are you to this person or these people overall?'
Experienced closeness to child: 
'I feel close to my child right now (whether with them or not)'
'Just before, when you were with your partner and one or more of your children, did you feel like your partner supported you in taking care of the children?'
‘I often find myself boring.’
‘I think others find me boring.’
‘I expected parenting to be more meaningful.’
‘I think other parents find parenting more meaningful than I do.’
‘I expected parenting to be less boring.’
‘I think other parents find parenting less boring than I do.’
‘I find it difficult to speak to others about finding parenting boring’.
‘I worry that it is not normal to find parenting boring.’
‘I think my child cries more than other children his age’
‘My child often sleeps poorly. 
‘My child struggles with eating.’
‘My child is often upset.’
‘My child wiggles/protests when getting dressed.’
‘My child wiggles/protests when bathed.’
‘I find my child difficult.’
‘I felt equipped to handle the situation, I was just in.’
‘When I was bored earlier, I thought about the boring situation differently to make it more interesting, important, or positive.’
‘When I was bored earlier, I distracted myself with thoughts unrelated to the situation.’
‘When I was bored before, I tried to change the boring situation by switching to a new activity.’
‘When I was bored before, I tried to distract myself from the boring situation by doing what was available at that moment (for example by: checking my phone, picking at something/fidgeting, throwing something around, or other immediately available distraction that didn't change the situation).’
‘I was bored.’
‘What I was doing felt meaningful.’
'My attention kept slipping.’
‘I felt overwhelmed.’
‘What I was doing before, felt understimulating.’
‘Just before answering this, I felt frustrated.’
‘Just before, I felt stuck in the situation I was or am still in.’
‘Just before answering this, I felt guilty about how I was feeling.’
‘I felt guilty about feeling bored.’
‘Before answering this survey, I was angry with my child.’
‘Before answering this survey, I thought my child was being difficult.’
‘I felt I had little control in the situation.’
‘I feel well-rested this morning.’
‘How many times, if any, were you up with your child in the night?’
Just before answering this, I worried about some aspect of my life or the future.'
'Did you in this recent interaction physically hurt your child in any way (for example hit them, pushed them, kicked them, physically overpowered them, slapped them, pinched them or anything similar)?'
'Did you in this recent interaction use your words in a potentially upsetting way? This could be by calling the child mean words (stupid, ugly etc.), by threatening the child with physical punishment, throwing them out of the house, or leaving yourself, or other similar things.'

DATA ANALYSES PLANNED
At the time point of data collection only the following analyses are planned (but we include the above variables for future exploratory work on boredom in parenthood): 
We will begin by regressing the participants’ boredom levels on a binary variable indicating whether the participants were currently parenting or not. To do so, we will estimate a Linear Mixed Model (LMM) with participant-specific random intercepts. For completeness, we will replicate these analyses using a set of 13 binary variables describing whether the participants were engaging in one of the general activities specified above. Again, our LMM will include participant-specific random intercepts.
 Second, we will t est whether boredom is more prominent while parenting for certain individuals. To do so, for each participant, we will obtain a measure of average boredom while parenting. Then, using OLS, we will regress this participant-specific measure of boredom on the variables capturing the participants personality tendencies as measured using the HEXACO-60 and the Short Dark Tetrad. 
Third, we will analyze boredom across parenting situations. To do so, the participants will report data on whether they are currently engaging in one of 13 different parenting situations (see above). For each individual, we will estimate average boredom within each of these 13 categories. Then, we will estimate average boredom for each category across individuals. To better understand the situational characteristics of these 13 parenting situations, we will also characterize the situations using the participants’ responses to 8 situational variables extracted from the DIAMOND model. Again, for a given parenting situation, we will first obtain an average estimate for each of these 8 variables within individuals. Then, we will average these scores across participants. This procedure will allow us to derive, for each of the 13 parenting situations, a measure of average boredom and average measures for each of the 8 situational variables in the diamonds model. 
Finally, using a network approach, we will estimate how closely boredom relates to a set of psychological constructs and antecedents when parenting. Specifically, we will analyze how boredom relates to attention, meaning, understimulation, overstimulation, sleep quality, frustration, experienced constraint, frustration, guilt, child difficulty, perceived control, and worry. As some of these observations might be missing (due to our random sampling procedure), we will begin by imputing our missing observations. Using a random forest approach (implemented in the missRanger R package), we will use all our available data to impute any missing observations on our variables of interest. Then, using our imputed dataset, we will estimate a multilevel vector autoregression model (multilevel VAR) using the R package mlVar. By doing so, we will obtain 3 networks: a temporal network, a contemporaneous network, and between-subjects network.

SAMPLE SIZE
In total, we will aim to recruit 300 participants. If the participants respond (on average) to 50% of the ESM prompts, and approximating power by using existing ESM approaches (Pirla et al., 2023), this sample size would allow us to detect a small correlation (Pearson’s r = 0.2), with a statistical power of over 90% (using two-tailed t-tests and an alpha of 0.05) between a given variable and the participants’ average boredom levels.