Time Use Research: Recent Developments

Academic and government researchers from most industrialized countries and an increasing number of developing countries are collecting and analyzing full 24-h time-diary data. These diary data provide a comprehensive and accurate basis for generating national accounts of time spent working, sleeping, and spending free time, and how daily life varies across demographic groups, across decades and across countries. Diaries can also provide data on multitasking, interacting with others, and the location and timing of daily activities in the American Time Use Survey and in more than 25 other (mainly European) counties. These diary data are being standardized and archived via the Multinational Time Use Survey at the University of Oxford.