1 Volume 17 Issue 1

Does Diary Mode Matter in Time-Use Research?

Stella Chatzitheochari, Elena Mylona

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in the use of new technologies for time-use data collection, driven by their potential to reduce survey administration costs and improve data quality. However, despite the steady growth of studies that employ web and app time diaries, there is little research on their comparability with traditional paper-administered diaries that have long been regarded as the “gold standard” for measurement in time-use research. This paper investigates diary mode effects on data quality and measurement, drawing on data from a mixed-mode large-scale time diary study of adolescents in the United Kingdom. After controlling for observable characteristics associated with diary mode selection and adolescent time-use, we find that web and app diaries yield higher quality data than paper diaries, which attests to the potential of new technologies in facilitating diary completion. At the same time, our analysis of broad time-use domains does not find substantial mode effects on measurement for most daily activity categories. We conclude by discussing avenues for future methodological research and implications for time-use data collection.


Does Diary Mode Matter in Time-Use Research?: Data Appendix

Stella Chatzitheochari, Elena Mylona

Data Appendix for Chatzitheochari & Mylona (2022) Does Diary Mode Matter in Time-Use Research? Journal of Time Use Research 10.32797/jtur-2022-1


Is Telecommuting Family-Friendly? Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

Harley Frazis

It has been argued that paid telecommuting is family-friendly, allowing workers the flexibility to attend to the needs of children or household tasks. This paper examines telecommuting using the 2017-18 American Time Use Survey module on Leave and Job Flexibilities. I examine the characteristics of telecommuters, and whether time is allocated toward family-oriented activities—or, to the contrary, toward work- in response to telecommuting. The main family-relevant effect of telecommuting is found to be an increase in childcare as a secondary activity.


MyTimeUse: An Online Implementation of the Day-Reconstruction Method

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, Liana C. Sayer

Time diaries can record precise measures of daily activities but few such diaries have been developed for use via the internet, which limits our knowledge of how social, economic, and demographic factors affect daily life and our ability to investigate trends over time. We have developed, refined, and deployed an original online time diary, mytimeuse.com, to study daily life in a longitudinal sample of graduate students and a longitudinal sample of U.S. residents recruited online. This article overviews the features we implemented to increase data quality and response rates. The diary is based on the day-reconstruction method, which has participants report on each primary activity in a selected day, then records further contextual information about the activity, such as social engagement, multitasking, and emotions. We recruited online participants to complete three time diaries and report their evaluations of our platform. Feedback indicates most participants found the diary to be intuitive and easy to use, and most who made an account with the diary platform fully participated in our study.