Conferences

Time budget surveys using diaries differ in the number of observation days. Since the 1990s EUROSTAT developed guidelines for EU and other countries to make time budget data from different countries comparable. The EUROSTAT guidelines recommend a two-day diary with both one weekday and one weekend day. Since a lot of activities follow a weekly rhythm, time use researchers often opt for a 7-day registration. A 7-day registration is more in line with the social relevant week cycle. With a two-day registration it is impossible to reconstruct the week cycle on an individual level, it is even impossible to reconstruct the weekend. It is well possible however to compose a ‘synthetic’ week on an aggregated level.

In this paper we use the pooled Flemish time budget data from 1999 en 2004 (in total 3313 respondents) to analyse in full detail some of the advantages and disadvantages of a 2 and 7 day registration. The respondents the Flemish time use surveys all filled in diaries for 7 consecutive days. To simulate the 2-day registration, we randomly selected one weekday and one weekend day for each respondent. The 2 day selection was compared with the original 7 day registration. More particularly we investigate the differences between a synthetic week and a fully registrated week. The aim of this comparison is to inventory the advantages and disadvantages of the 2 day and 7 day registration method. To do that we compare different indicators, as time use per respondent and per participant, the standard deviation of the time use per respondent, the effect of different back ground variables, … We also examine whether certain types of activities are more affected by the method of registrations than others. Finally we examine whether a longer period of registration has effects on the quality of the data (less detail and less accurate).