The current study utilizes a daily diary design in order to examine differences in exposure and reactivity to daily family stressors between African Americans and European Americans. By definition, stress is a process that occurs within the individual when an individual encounters a challenging or disruptive event (i.e. stressor exposure) and evidences an emotional, physiological or behavioral reaction to the event (i.e., stressor reactivity). Daily family stressors are the routine challenges and frustrations of day-to-day family life that disrupt family relationships, and are likely to have direct, immediate effects on well-being (Almeida, 2005). The daily diary approach captures within-person processes, making it possible to examine day-to-day fluctuations in associations between family stressors and well-being within the same individual over time (Almeida, 2005; Bolger et al., 2003). This design is a step toward understanding how proximal processes, such as stressor reactivity, may have consequences for racial disparities in long-term health and well-being (Bolger et al., 2003; Williams & Mohammed, 2009).
