IPUMS Time Use, in partnership with Dr. Teresa Harms of the Centre for Time Use Research, is proud to announce the public release of the 1930-31 USDA College Women Time Use study. These data provide researchers a unique look into the lives of married, college-educated women at the beginning of the Great Depression. The respondents were asked to complete a detailed record of their time use for seven consecutive 24-hour periods (see a sample daily diary below; borrowed with permission from Teresa Harms, CTUR). The women described activities in their own words, listing them consecutively as they occurred throughout the day, with a minimum interval of five minutes. They also recorded the time devoted to various homemaking tasks by other household members and paid help as well as demographic and work status data and information about the household. The data also include the verbatim activity reports and the occupations the women reported at the time of data collection. All data are available via the IPUMS American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS) extract system.
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IPUMS ATUS data now available for online analysis
A Q&A about the new tool
By Daniel Backman, Senior Data Analyst, IPUMS
Earlier this year, the IPUMS Time Use team enabled analysis of American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data via an online data analysis tool. The Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) program was developed at UC Berkeley and allows users to analyze data online without a statistical package.
What data are available for analysis?
All years of ATUS data are available for online analysis. Users can choose to analyze a single year of ATUS data, or select among a number of multiple-year data files. Data from specific modules are also pooled together to facilitate analysis of ATUS module data and appropriate weights are set as defaults.
If you are familiar with ATUS data, it is important to note that the data in SDA are not in a hierarchical (or time sequence) format. As such, you are not able to create your own time use variables that summarize time use within a person through the SDA tool. However, a number of pre-fabricated time use variables are available (BLS and IPUMS summary variables as well as the ERS Eating and Health module time use variables).
Travel in the ATUS: Where You Are or What You’re Doing?
It’s that time of year again! The weather is getting colder by the day, and it’s the perfect time to travel. Wait, before you click away, this is not a travel ad (though maybe you would like it to be? Stay tuned…). Instead, this is a piece about measuring travel in the American Time Use Survey (IPUMS ATUS).
IPUMS Time Use Research in Action
This past month, the IPUMS Time Use team attended the International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR) meetings, which were held in Washington, DC from July 10-12. The meetings were engaging and inspiring, and there were many papers featuring IPUMS Time Use data. We love seeing our data being used! This blog post features some of the research that was powered by IPUMS.
New to IPUMS Time Use and IPUMS MEPS: Rectangularizing Down
Don’t be a square—rectangularize!
Introducing…the option to rectangularize down for extracts in IPUMS Time Use and IPUMS MEPS.
What do we mean by “rectangularize”?
Forging New Paths for Adulthood
We all know about what Phyllis Moen calls the linear lockstep life path: first learning, then working for advancement (or at least security), then retirement. What happens when this traditional path no longer fits the realities of most people’s lives?
All work and no play with children makes moms less happy parents
Researchers from Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Population Center have used IPUMS Time Use data to find that mothers are less happy than fathers with their parenting duties. Mothers report more stress and greater fatigue than fathers. This experience gap is attributed to the differing tasks of each parent. The paper was recently published in the American Sociological Review.