A different kind of survey question
Most surveys ask what people think or how they usually behave. A time use survey asks something more concrete: what were you doing, and when? Respondents are typically asked to account for a specific day, or sometimes several, in slots of a few minutes up to an hour. Researchers then add up how the day divided between sleep, paid work, housework, caring, travel, meals, leisure and other categories.
The approach rests on a simple idea. People find it hard to estimate how they spend their time in general, but they can often reconstruct what they did yesterday. Recording the day reduces dependence on impression and memory about habits, which is why diary-style surveys are widely regarded as a core source for studying daily life.
How a diary survey is typically run
Details differ between countries and projects, but several elements are common.
A sampled person and a sampled day. Respondents are chosen as a sample of the population, and each is assigned a particular day to describe, so that weekdays and weekends are represented across the sample. If days were chosen by respondents, convenient or quiet ones might be favoured.
Recording. Participants either fill in a paper or online diary during the day, or describe the previous day in an interview. Diaries completed as the day goes on are less reliant on memory but ask more effort from participants. Interview-based recall is easier to collect but depends on remembering.
Coding. Activities written in the respondent’s own words are placed into a classification of categories. This coding step involves judgement and rules, such as how to treat travel, waiting or breaks.
Context questions. Many surveys also record where the person was, who they were with and sometimes how they felt, adding detail about the setting of activities.
Weighting. Results are adjusted so the sample better reflects the population, for example by age, sex and day of week. The principles resemble those described under survey weighting.
How this differs from estimating
Compare two ways of finding out how much time people spend on a pastime:
- Stylised question. “In a typical week, how many hours do you spend on this activity?” The respondent must define typical, remember, and add things up.
- Diary. “What were you doing between 7 and 8 in the evening on Tuesday?” The respondent only has to recall a recent, concrete period.
Research on these approaches has often found that stylised estimates can differ from diary totals, with some activities, particularly work hours or socially approved activities, tending to be over-reported in estimates, though the pattern varies by activity and group. A reasonable summary is that diaries tend to be the better guide for how time is divided, while estimates can still be useful for how people perceive their own time.
The two also answer different questions. A diary describes a day; an estimate describes a person’s sense of their routine. Someone may feel busy and rushed even if the diary shows several hours of free time, and that feeling is a legitimate finding too.
What time use surveys can reveal
- Broad shares of time. How a typical day splits between paid work, unpaid household tasks, personal care and free time.
- Differences between groups. How these shares vary by age, sex, employment status or household type.
- Changes over time. If a survey is repeated with consistent methods, shifts in how time is allocated, such as changes in time spent on housework or travel.
- Timing and sequence. When activities happen in the day, which matters for questions about commuting, shift work and daily routines.
- Unpaid work. Care and household work, which do not show up in wage records, are measured directly.
Limits to keep in mind
Sample size and rare activities. A survey might include thousands of diary days, yet an activity done by a small share of people on any particular day appears in only a few of them. Estimates for niche hobbies can be unstable, and breakdowns by small groups even more so.
One day is not a person. A single day cannot show a person’s habits. A person who plays a sport weekly may not have played on their diary day. Averages across many people smooth this out, but they also imply that the typical day is lived by nobody exactly.
Primary and secondary activities. Many diaries record a main activity, sometimes with a second activity alongside. Listening to music or looking after a child while cooking may be underrecorded, depending on the design. Multitasking is thus partly invisible.
Categories and coding. The same behaviour can land in different categories in different studies. If a classification changes, comparisons across years can be affected. What counts as leisure rather than chore remains a matter of convention.
Burden and non-response. Filling in a diary takes effort, and those who decline or drop out may differ systematically from those who complete it, a concern associated with non-response bias. Particularly busy people may be harder to reach, which could shift averages.
Reporting effects. Even in diaries, some people may record the day in a tidier way than it happened, or leave out activities they consider private or unimportant.
Timing. The season, the year and any unusual events can affect a day. A survey fielded during an unusual period may not describe ordinary life.
Cost and frequency. Because they are expensive, national diary surveys are often run only every few years, and not all countries run them regularly. This makes them poor at tracking fast-moving trends.
Reading a time use claim
When you see a statistic from a time use survey, useful questions are:
- Was it based on diaries or on estimates?
- How many diary days, and how many people, lie behind the figure?
- Does the number describe all days, or only weekdays or weekends?
- Is the activity a main one or one done alongside others?
- Have the methods and categories stayed the same across the years compared?
Diary surveys do not capture everything about a life, but they offer one of the more careful ways of looking at how days are actually spent, provided their limits are kept in view.