This proposal seeks continued funding to integrate, document and disseminate individual-level data on how people allocate their time. The first phase of the project, focusing on data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), is on schedule to accomplish all the goals described in our original application. The primary goal was the development of an online system - the American Time Use Survey Data Extract Builder (ATUS-X) - that made it easier for researchers to work with ATUS data. Our work involved data reformatting, development of integrated documentation, matching Current Population Survey supplement data to the ATUS, and the design of a web dissemination system that lets users define data extracts that include custom-designed time-use variables. We now propose to extend the scope of the project backwards through time and geographically across countries, increasing the number of samples from the 8 ATUS samples already incorporated into the ATUS-X system nearly six-fold to 46. This will involve building a new Time Use Data Extract System (TUS-X) that can manage the full scope of the historical and international data. To carry out this work, the University of Maryland and the University of Minnesota will partner with the Centre for Time Use Research (CTUR), University of Oxford, to 1) expand the data base by adding the 5 new ATUS datasets that will become available from 2011 to 2015, 5 historical U.S. surveys conducted between 1965 and 2001, and 33 samples drawn from the United States, Canada and six European countries over the past five decades, plus linking to additional CPS data; 2) enhance the data by making available new variables harmonized across time and space; adding new filters for the creation of time use variables that reflect both the respondent's primary activity and also any simultaneous (secondary) activities; and introducing new functionality to support the analysis of samples that include time diaries for multiple persons per household and/or multiple days per person; 3) document the data, including developing comprehensive integrated metadata for all new samples and variables and extensively reporting the comparability of each variable across countries and over time; and 4) improve data dissemination, expanding user support and outreach. Continuing this project for another five years and adding samples and functionality will facilitate research on parental time with children, how time use influences health, household responses to changing economic conditions, and cross-national research on health and well-being in different cultural and policy settings.
This project makes large U.S. and international data bases with detailed data on time use more easily accessible to researchers. By combining data over time and across countries and enriching information available across household members, this project will facilitate research on how time use influences the health of families and individuals, how household health behaviors respond to changing economic conditions, and how health and well-being differ across cultural and policy settings.
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