Daily Life of the Aged: An Analysis of Time-Use Diaries

Abstract

The study of how people spend their time constitutes a major theme of research in social science disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, economics, and social psychology (Bolger et al. 2003; Juster et al. 2003). Such studies, going back to the beginning of the twentieth century, employ a wide range of methodologies for collecting data on time use. Such methods include direct observational approaches such as the shadowing method (Quinlan 2008) to the experience sampling method that invites respondents to record their activity at random points during the day (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1987; Zuzanek 2013). In recent years, time-use diaries (TUD) have emerged as a reliable and accurate data collection instrument to obtain information on the activity patterns of large populations (Robinson and Godbey 1999; Michelson 2005). After the large-scale Multinational Time Budget Research Project conducted in the 1960s (Robinson et al. 1972), a considerable number of countries, from developed to developing countries, began funding national time use surveys on a regular basis.