Diary kinds and functions, and adolescents' motives for keeping a diary

To test the hypothesis that diary keeping is still important for adolescents but takes many forms - e.g., the school diary (SD) might be used also as a personal diary (PD) - a questionnaire was developed and administered to a probabilistic sample of 555 11-20 year-old Italian students attending grades 1-8 of either ‘humanistic’ and ‘technical’ high schools. Most questions were checklists, associated to filters - e.g., “Did you ever keep a diary? Yes, No”; (if Yes) “Which the following diary forms did you keep: 1. Diary on which I write my thoughts, what happens to me, etc.; A collection of e-mail messages; etc. Questions pertained to 4 main themes: availability to Ss, and characteristics, of social networks; Ss' SD uses; Ss' keeping diary forms other than SD: a PD, collecting letters one has received, etc; Ss’ beliefs about PD. The answer frequency results indicated that Ss typically enjoy a supportive network of friends and family members. They nonetheless feel the need to record in some way main events in their lives, experiences, thoughts, etc. Recording takes various forms and differ in its 'extension' and type. As hypohesized, most Ss use their SD also for non-scholastic purposes, such as inserting photos, notes, etc., as well as for writing their thoughts, and having 'selected' schoolmates and friends write in them. Many Ss have kept a PD, feeling better when they do so, re-reading it to re-live emotions and events, to understand better their own feelings, to get ‘distance’ from events; many collected letters, postcards, etc. Most Ss would like to keep, or to have kept in the past, a PD (to record events, personal thoughts, to write down poems and songs, to have friends write dedications to them, etc.) and believe that a PD - that ought to be 'secret' - would be useful in very many ways. In sum, diaries of some kind in order are perceived as necessary both to enhance ‘historical personal memory’ and to engage in a process of better self-understanding. Sex, age, and school type induced several significant differences in Ss' answers.