The Time use diary design for our times: general principles for online design working paper is now available.
The Centre for time use research presents a multi-field digital time-use diary design matching the information collected in best practice pen-and-paper designs such as the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS). Many diary tools for online self-administration use a survey-style iteration of repetitive questions, and have consequently had to compromise on the amount of information collected in an effort to reduce respondent burden.
The paper outlines the guiding principles underlying decades of design development of general-purpose time use diary surveys. A general-purpose design, incorporating multiple continuous independent diary fields, is important because it offers both continuity with historically collected time use diary data, and versatility, providing data for a wide-ranging and still growing corpus of substantive research and policy applications.
The online design mimics the ‘light diary’ visual presentation, including all the fields and activities of the HETUS diary. Methodological work to date suggests that this visually intuitive design does not lead to an erosion of data quality or increased respondent burden. For use with interviewers, a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) version of this diary was developed, which may be extended to a Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) version – with the advantage that respondent and interviewer can look together at the diary day.