Harmonised European Time Use Studies HETUS

1
Harmonised European Time Use Studies
(HETUS) Setting the Trend for Cross-National
European Time Use Research a poster
presentation by Dr. Kimberly Fisher and Professor
Jonathan I. Gershuny Institute for Social and
Economic Research Work Time and Leisure Time
Dynamics and Convergence in Changing
Contexts IATUR meeting 15-18 October 2002, Lisbon
Europe has a long history of comparative time use
research that began with the Hungarian scholar
Alexander Szalai's 12 country study in 1965, and
later produced the Multinational Time Use Study
(MTUS), which post-harmonised data collected
from the 1960s through the present decade from
25 countries. The full potential to use
harmonised time diary data to inform European
comparative research and policy analysis has yet
to be tapped.
The data collection marks the end of the first of
many steps. When the HETUS guidelines were
developed, some countries had already begun
developing time use studies. Other countries had
a need to produce data comparable to earlier
national studies. Other countries did not have
funds to implement two diaries or to collect
data for a whole year. Thus, many countries did
not fully adhere to the HETUS guidelines. Now a
post-collection harmonisation process begins.
To promote the wider use of time use data in
policy analysis, a consortium of statistical
agencies and academics joined with EUROSTAT to
develop Harmonised European Time Use Studies HETUS

• Other issues for harmonisation arise
• at this phase and are under discussion
• including -
• how to address differences in sample sizes,
  periods of
• data collection, and diary formats
• how to measure and present diary quality issues
• whether / how to impute some missing time
  information
• how to present secondary activity data in a
• meaningful and easily used manner
• - ensuring anonymity of diarists

• Two 24 hour diaries (one week day, one weekend
  day)
• Weekly schedule covering all episodes of paid
  work over the full week
• - Own words recording of activities in 10 minute
  time slots
• Capture main activity, secondary acts, location,
  mode of travel,
• and who else is present
• All household members (except very young
  children) keep diaries
• Collect data for a whole year from a random
  national sample

HETUS developed protocols for time use data
collection which have now been piloted and
implemented across Europe
Anonymised data files with diaries as row cases
will be available in two ways. Users will be
able to run basic output from an interactive
version of the data made available on the
EUROSTAT web site. Researchers also will be able
to order data from EUROSTAT at an affordable
price. The interactive web-based data and data
file will likely become available in 2004. The
data will include variables about the diarists,
diarists' households, study methodology, diary
design, diary quality, linking variables,
weights and 4 sets of sequenced information (main
activity, secondary activity, location/mode of
travel, who else is present) covering 144
10-minute time slots and aggregated information,
covering main activity in 10 categories, main
activity in 49 categories, 9 location/mode of
travel categories, 63 combined main and second
activity categories, 5 categories of time with
others (each set of which totals 1440 minutes)
HETUS data will be widely available in 3 forms.
By Spring 2003, the EUROSTAT time use web site
will display basic tables covering average time
(in hours and minutes) in 12 grouped
activities. Other countries which did not produce
HETUS studies will also contribute data to these
tables.
There will be 5 sets of basic tables a summary
table (shown in graphic to the right) all men
and all women (grouped by 11 categories of
family, age, household status) single parent,
1 children aged lt18 in couple, 1 children aged
lt7 in couple, 1 children aged lt18, no child
aged lt7 aged lt25, no dependent child, lives with
parents aged 25-44, no dependent child, lives
with parents in couple, no dependent child, aged
up to 44 aged up to 44, no dependent child,
other household in couple, no dependent child,
aged 45-64 aged 45-64, no dependent child, other
household in couple, no dependent child, aged
65 aged 65 , no dependent child, other
household all employed men, and employed women
(grouped by similar categories, with the aged
65 categories combined and parents in
couples split by working full-time or part-time)
The next phase, doing the research with the data,
is up to you