An Understanding SocietyAssociated Study application was received from the Centre for Time Use Research, Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. This was approved and implemented as part of IP7 data collection. This project aimed to use a diary study as a basis for calibrating time-use estimates using the stylized questions in the main Understanding Society panel. Data from the time diaries are in the record g_timediary_ip.
It was proposed that responding adults would be asked to complete two time-use diaries, one of which would cover a randomly selected weekday (Monday-Friday) and the second a randomly selected weekend-day (Saturday-Sunday). All adults within the same household were allocated the same two days of the week. However, it should be noted that differences in date of interview may mean that adults in the same household weren’t completing their diaries in the same weeks. For example, in a household which was allocated a Thursday and Saturday, an adult interviewed on Monday would complete the diary that week whilst another adult interviewed on the Friday would complete their diary for the same Saturday but the Thursday diary would be completed on the following week.
Controlling variables on record hhsamp:
ff_diaryweekw7
1 Monday
2 Tuesday
3 Wednesday
4 Thursday
5 Friday
ff_diarywew7
1 Saturday
2 Sunday
The time diary used was a “light-touch” diary, that is, the respondents would indicate their activities against a pre-coded list, rather than writing down what they were doing. The week-day and weekend diaries were identical in layout, except that the week-day diary (green cover) had five boxes on the cover labelled Monday to Friday, and the weekend diary (blue cover) had just two boxes for Saturday and Sunday. The front cover also had boxes in which the interviewer filled in their interviewer number, the Serial number of the household and the person number of the respondent. The interviewer also filled in the first name, date-of-birth and sex of the respondent on the cover, along with the date of interview, diary day and diary date. The next two pages had instructions on how to complete the diary, and the following two pages had an example of how to complete the diary.
The recording of activities started on page 6. The time of day was indicated along the top of the page, with columns for each 10-minute period. Pages 6-7 covered Early morning and Morning (4.00am – 11.50am), pages 8-9 covered Afternoon and Early evening (12.00 to 7.50pm) and pages 10-11 covered Evening and Night (8.00pm to 3.50pm).
The rows of the diary contained the activities. There were 29 pre-coded activities, along with a 30th which was “Other” with an instruction to write the activity in. In addition to the activities, there were also requests for additional information. Where a respondent indicated that they had travelled, they were also asked to indicate their mode of travel. For each time-slot, the respondent was also asked to indicate how much they enjoyed that activity (from 1=not at all to 7=very much) and who was with them.
To indicate that they had participated in a particular activity, the respondent marked with a line the time they were doing that activity. The start and finish time for the activity was to be marked by an X with the line joining the two. If they were doing a secondary activity at the same time, they were to mark the start and end times of this with a dot (•) and join these with a line.
Since IP7 employed a mixed-mode design, the arrangements for passing the diaries to the respondents differed by mode of interview. Responding adults in households that completed all their interviews online were sent their diaries in the mail, with a covering letter and a pre-paid return envelope. For households which required an interviewer visit – those in the F2F sample, and those in the mixed-mode sample who were not completed online – the interviewer handed over the diaries to the respondent at the end of the interview. In households where the interviewer visited, and where someone had completed online, the interviewer also gave the adult who responded online their diary. The interviewer also gave the respondent(s) a pre-paid return envelope in which to return the diaries.
The CAPI script included instructions that the interviewer read out to the respondent, whilst they showed them the diary. Online, there was no mention of the time-diary, but the covering letter which accompanied the time diaries introduced the time diary, and gave instructions on how to complete it. There was an additional £5 incentive for accepting the time-diary; this was included in the letter for those completing online and was handed over by the interviewer for those who accepted the time diary in person.
At the start of fieldwork, respondents were sent an SMS text message and/or email reminder the day before the diary day and one on the diary day itself. Where we had the mobile telephone number and an email address for a respondent, this meant they got two reminders (SMS + email) on each of these days. However, we had a small number of complaints about these multiple reminders, and so the reminder the day before the diary day was dropped. All respondents who had accepted or been sent time diaries, but who hadn’t returned them within two weeks of the completion dates were telephoned to remind them to complete and return their diaries.
Adults who participated online were more likely to return time diaries than those who participated face-to-face. Almost half of face-to-face respondents returned a diary, compared to two-thirds of online participants (49.9% compared to 66.1%). There was no difference between the original IP1 sample and the IP4 refreshment sample in proportion of respondents returning diaries (54.0% compared to 57.1%). Just under half of the IP7 refreshment sample respondents returned diaries (49.3%), less than both the other samples.
