Diary Study Database

The Diary Study (also known as The T.E.A.M. Study or The Progress Principle Study) was carried out in the late 1990s to early 2000s in order to probe the everyday work experiences of professionals working on important innovation projects within their companies. Teresa Amabile was the principal investigator. The database contains quantitative data and detailed categorical coding of qualitative data (not the verbatim qualitative data itself). Data were collected daily from the 238 professionals in 26 project teams who participated in this study throughout the entire course of a project (or discrete project phase) that required creativity – novel, useful ideas – in order to be successful. Many of the projects involved new product development. To the extent possible, daily data collection with a given team began on the first day of the project and continued until the last day. A large body of additional data on the individuals and their performance was collected at various other points during the study. The 26 teams were recruited from seven different companies in three industries: high tech, chemicals, and consumer products. Five of the companies had four teams that participated; one company had five teams; and one company had one team. (Please see the Metadata tab, below, for full description.)