Technical Note
The estimates in this release are based on annual
average data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).
The ATUS, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau
for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is a
continuous survey about how individuals age 15 and over
spend their time.
Information in this release will be made available
to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice
phone: (202) 691-5200; Federal Relay Service: (800)
877-8339.
Survey methodology
Data collection for the ATUS began in January 2003.
Sample cases for the survey are selected monthly, and
interviews are conducted continuously throughout the
year. In 2010, approximately 13,200 individuals were
interviewed. Estimates are released annually.
ATUS sample households are chosen from the
households that completed their eighth (final)
interview for the Current Population Survey (CPS), the
nation’s monthly household labor force survey. ATUS
sample households are selected to ensure that estimates
will be nationally representative.
One individual age 15 or over is randomly chosen
from each sampled household. This "designated person"
is interviewed by telephone once about his or her
activities on the day before the interview--the "diary
day."
All ATUS interviews are conducted using Computer
Assisted Telephone Interviewing. Procedures are in
place to collect information from the small number of
households that did not provide a telephone number
during the CPS interview.
ATUS designated persons are preassigned a day of the
week about which to report. Preassignment is designed
to reduce variability in response rates across the week
and to allow oversampling of weekend days so that
accurate weekend day measures can be developed.
Interviews occur on the day following the assigned day.
For example, a person assigned to report about a Monday
would be contacted on the following Tuesday. Ten
percent of designated persons are assigned to report
about each of the five weekdays. Twenty-five percent
are assigned to report about each weekend day.
Households are called for up to 8 consecutive weeks
(for example, 8 Tuesdays) in order to secure an
interview.
About the questionnaire
In the time diary portion of the ATUS interview,
survey respondents sequentially report activities they
did between 4 a.m. on the day before the interview
("yesterday") until 4 a.m. on the day of the interview.
For each activity, respondents are asked how long the
activity lasted. For activities other than personal
care activities (such as sleeping and grooming),
interviewers also ask respondents where they were and
who was in the room with them (if at home) or who
accompanied them (if away from home). If respondents
report doing more than one activity at a time, they are
asked to identify which one was the "main" (primary)
activity. If none can be identified, then the
interviewer records the first activity mentioned.
After completing the time diary, interviewers ask
respondents additional questions to clearly identify
work, volunteering, and secondary childcare activities.
Secondary childcare is defined as having a child under
age 13 in one’s care while doing other activities.
In addition, the ATUS includes an update of the
household composition information from the last CPS
interview (2 to 5 months prior to the ATUS interview)
and the employment status information of the respondent
and his or her spouse or unmarried partner. For
respondents who became employed or changed jobs between
the last CPS interview and the ATUS interview,
information also is collected on industry, occupation,
class of worker, and earnings. For those who are
unemployed and/or on layoff, CPS questions on job
search activities are asked. Those who report being on
layoff are asked if or when they expect to be recalled
to work. Finally, a question about current school
enrollment status is asked of all respondents ages 15
to 49.
After completing the interview, primary activity
descriptions are assigned a single 6-digit code using
the ATUS Coding Lexicon. The 3-tier coding system
consists of 17 major activity categories, each with
multiple second- and third-tier subcategories. These
coding lexicon categories are then combined into
composite categories for publication, such as in this
news release. Descriptions of categories shown in this
release can be found in the Major activity category
definitions section of this Technical Note. The 2010
ATUS Coding Lexicon can be accessed at
www.bls.gov/tus/lexicons.htm.
Concepts and definitions
Average day. The average day measure reflects an
average distribution across all persons in the
reference population and all days of the week. Average
day measures for the entire population provide a
mechanism for seeing the overall distribution of time
allocation for society as a whole. The ATUS collects
data about daily activities from all segments of the
population age 15 and over, including persons who are
employed and not employed. Activity profiles differ
based upon age, employment status, gender, and other
characteristics. On an average day in 2010, persons in
the U.S. age 15 and over did work and work-related
activities for 3.5 hours, slept 8.7 hours, spent 5.2
hours doing leisure and sports activities, and spent
1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining
4.8 hours
were spent doing a variety of other activities,
including eating and drinking, attending school, and
shopping. (See table 1.) By comparison, an average
weekday for persons employed full time on days that
they worked included 9.1 hours doing work and work-
related activities, 7.5 hours sleeping, 2.9 hours doing
leisure and sports activities, and 0.9 hour doing
household activities. The remaining 3.6 hours were
spent in other activities, such as those described
above. (These estimates include related travel time.)
Many activities typically are not done on a daily
basis, and some activities only are done by a subset of
the population. For example, only 42 percent of all
persons age 15 years and over worked on an average day
in 2010 because some were not employed and those who
were employed did not work every day. (See table 1.)
Average hours per day. The average number of hours
spent in a 24-hour day (between 4 a.m. on the diary day
and 4 a.m. on the interview day) doing a specified
activity.
-- Average hours per day, population. The average
number of hours per day is computed using all responses
from a given population, including those of respondents
who did not do a particular activity on their diary
day. These estimates reflect how many population
members engaged in an activity and the amount of time
they spent doing it.
-- Average hours per day, persons who did the
activity. The average number of hours per day is
computed using only responses from those who engaged in
a particular activity on their diary day.
Diary day. The diary day is the day about which the
respondent reports. For example, the diary day of a
respondent interviewed on Tuesday is Monday.
Earnings
-- Usual weekly earnings. Data represent the
earnings of full-time wage and salary workers with one
job only, before taxes and other deductions. They
include any overtime pay, commissions, or tips usually
received. Usual weekly earnings are only updated in
ATUS for about a third of employed respondents—if the
respondent changed jobs or employment status between
the CPS and ATUS interviews or if the CPS weekly
earnings value was imputed. This means that the
earnings information could be out of date because the
CPS interview was done 2 to 5 months prior to the ATUS
interview. Respondents are asked to identify the
easiest way for them to report earnings (hourly,
weekly, biweekly, twice monthly, annually, or other)
and how much they usually earn in the reported time
period. Earnings reported on a basis other than weekly
are converted to a weekly equivalent. The term "usual"
is as perceived by the respondent. If the respondent
asks for a definition of usual, interviewers are
instructed to define the term as more than half the
weeks worked during the past 4 or 5 months.
-- Weekly earnings ranges. The ranges used represent
approximately 25 percent of full-time wage and salary
workers who held only one job. For example, 25 percent
of full-time wage and salary workers with one job only
had weekly earnings of $540 or less. These dollar
values vary from year to year.
Employment status
-- Employed. All persons who, at any time during the
7 days prior to the interview:
1) Did any work at all as paid employees; worked
in their own business, profession, or on their
own farm; or usually worked 15 hours or more as
unpaid workers in a family-operated enterprise;
or
2) Were not working but had jobs or businesses
from which they were temporarily absent due to
illness, bad weather, vacation, childcare
problems, labor-management disputes, maternity or
paternity leave, job training, or other family or
personal reasons, whether or not they were paid
for the time off or were seeking other jobs.
-- Employed full time. Full-time workers are those
who usually worked 35 hours or more per week at all
jobs combined.
-- Employed part time. Part-time workers are those
who usually worked fewer than 35 hours per week at all
jobs combined.
-- Not employed. Persons are not employed if they do
not meet the conditions for employment. The not
employed include those classified as unemployed as well
as those classified as not in the labor force (using
CPS definitions).
The numbers of employed and not employed persons in
this report do not correspond to published totals from
the CPS for several reasons. First, the reference
population for the ATUS is age 15 years and over,
whereas it is age 16 years and over for the CPS.
Second, ATUS data are collected continuously, the
employment reference period being the 7 days prior to
the interview. By contrast, CPS data are usually
collected during the week including the 19th of the
month and refer to employment during the week
containing the 12th of the month. Finally, the CPS
accepts answers from household members about other
household members whereas such proxy responses are not
allowed in the ATUS. One consequence of the difference
in proxy reporting is that a significantly higher
proportion of teenagers report employment in the ATUS
than in the CPS. While the information on employment
from the ATUS is useful for assessing work in the
context of other daily activities, the employment data
are not intended for analysis of current employment
trends. Compared with the CPS and other estimates of
employment, the ATUS estimates are based on a much
smaller sample and are only available with a
substantial lag since ATUS data and estimates are
published during the year following data collection.
Household children. Household children are children
under age 18 residing in the household of the ATUS
respondent. The children may be related to the
respondent (such as his or her own children,
grandchildren, nieces or nephews, or brothers or
sisters) or not related (such as foster children or
children of roommates).
Primary activity. A primary activity is the main
activity a respondent was doing at a specified time.
With the exception of secondary childcare in table 10,
the estimates presented in this release reflect time
spent in primary activities only.
Secondary activities. A secondary (or simultaneous)
activity is an activity done at the same time as a
primary activity. With the exception of the care of
children under age 13, information on secondary
activities is not systematically collected in the ATUS.
Secondary childcare. Secondary childcare is care
for children under age 13 that is done while doing an
activity other than primary childcare, such as cooking
dinner. Secondary childcare estimates are derived by
summing the durations of activities during which
respondents had a household child or their own
nonhousehold child under age 13 in their care while
doing activities other than primary childcare. It is
restricted to times the respondent was awake.
Secondary childcare time for household children is
further restricted to the time between when the first
household child under age 13 woke up and the last
household child under age 13 went to bed. If
respondents report providing both primary and secondary
care at the same time, the time is attributed to
primary care only.
Weekday, weekend, and holiday estimates. Estimates
for weekdays are an average of reports about Monday
through Friday. Estimates for weekend days and
holidays are an average of reports about Saturdays,
Sundays, and the following holidays: New Year’s Day,
Easter, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day,
Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. In 2010, the
telephone call center was closed the day after the
Fourth of July, so data were not collected about this
holiday.
Major activity category definitions
The following definitions describe the activity
categories shown in this report. All major time-use
categories in the tables include related travel time
and waiting time. For example, time spent "driving to
the stadium" and time spent "waiting to get into the
stadium to play ball" are included in Leisure and
sports.
Personal care activities. Personal care activities
include sleeping, grooming (such as bathing or
dressing), health-related self-care, and personal or
private activities. Receiving unpaid personal care
from others (for example, "my sister put polish on my
nails") also is captured in this category. In general,
respondents are not asked who they were with or where
they were for personal care activities, as such
information can be sensitive.
Eating and drinking. All time spent eating or
drinking (except eating and drinking done as part of a
work or volunteer activity), whether alone, with
others, at home, at a place of purchase, or somewhere
else, is classified here. Time spent purchasing or
talking related to purchasing meals, snacks, or
beverages is not counted as part of this category; time
spent doing these activities is counted in Purchasing
goods and services.
Household activities. Household activities are
those done by persons to maintain their households.
These include housework; cooking; lawn and garden care;
pet care; vehicle maintenance and repair; home
maintenance, repair, decoration, and renovation; and
household management and organizational activities
(such as filling out paperwork, balancing a checkbook,
or planning a party). Food preparation, whether or not
reported as done specifically for another household
member, is always classified as a household activity
unless it was done as a volunteer, work, or income-
generating activity. For example, "making breakfast
for my son" is coded as a household activity, not as
childcare.
Purchasing goods and services. This category
includes purchases of consumer goods, professional and
personal care services, household services, and
government services. Consumer purchases include most
purchases and rentals of consumer goods, regardless of
the mode or place of purchase or rental (in person, via
telephone, over the Internet, at home, or in a store).
Gasoline, grocery, other food purchases, and all other
shopping are further broken out in subcategories.
Time spent obtaining, receiving, and purchasing
professional and personal care services provided by
someone else also is classified in this category.
Professional services include childcare, financial
services and banking, legal services, medical and adult
care services, real estate services, and veterinary
services. Personal care services include day spas,
hair salons and barbershops, nail salons, and tanning
salons. Activities classified here include time spent
paying, meeting with, or talking to service providers,
as well as time spent receiving the service or waiting
to receive the service.
Time spent arranging for and purchasing household
services provided by someone else also is classified
here. Household services include housecleaning;
cooking; lawn care and landscaping; pet care;
tailoring, laundering, and dry cleaning; vehicle
maintenance and repairs; and home repairs, maintenance,
and construction.
This category also captures the time spent obtaining
government services--such as applying for food
stamps--and purchasing government-required licenses or
paying fines or fees.
Caring for and helping household members. Time
spent doing activities to care for or help any child
(under age 18) or adult in the household, regardless of
relationship to the respondent or the physical or
mental health status of the person being helped, is
classified here. Caring for and helping activities for
household children and adults are coded separately in
subcategories.
Primary childcare activities include time spent
providing physical care; playing with children; reading
to children; assistance with homework; attending
children’s events; taking care of children’s health
needs; and dropping off, picking up, and waiting for
children. Passive childcare done as a primary activity
(such as "keeping an eye on my son while he swam in the
pool") also is included. A child’s presence during the
activity is not enough in itself to classify the
activity as childcare. For example, "watching
television with my child" is coded as a leisure
activity, not as childcare.
Secondary childcare occurs when persons have a child
under age 13 "in their care" while doing activities
other than primary childcare. For a complete
definition, see the Concepts and definitions section of
this Technical Note.
Caring for and helping household members also
includes a range of activities done to benefit adult
members of households, such as providing physical and
medical care or obtaining medical services. Doing
something as a favor for or helping another household
adult does not automatically result in classification
as a helping activity. For example, a report of
"helping my spouse cook dinner" is considered a
household activity (food preparation), not a helping
activity, because cooking dinner benefits the household
as a whole. By contrast, doing paperwork for another
person usually benefits the individual, so a report of
"filling out an insurance application for my spouse" is
considered a helping activity.
Caring for and helping nonhousehold members. Caring
for and helping nonhousehold members includes
activities persons do to care for or help those--either
children (under age 18) or adults--who do not live with
them. When done for or through an organization, time
spent helping nonhousehold members is classified as
volunteering, rather than as helping nonhousehold
members. Care of nonhousehold children, even when done
as a favor or helping activity for another adult, is
always classified as caring for and helping
nonhousehold children, not as helping another adult.
Working and work-related activities. This category
includes time spent working, doing activities as part
of one’s job, engaging in income-generating activities
(not as part of one’s job), and job search activities.
"Working" includes hours spent doing the specific tasks
required of one’s main or other job, regardless of
location or time of day. "Work-related activities"
include activities that are not obviously work but are
done as part of one’s job, such as having a business
lunch or playing golf with clients. "Other income-
generating activities" are those done "on the side" or
under informal arrangement and are not part of a
regular job. Such activities might include selling
homemade crafts, babysitting, maintaining a rental
property, or having a yard sale. These activities are
those that persons "are paid for or will be paid for."
Travel time related to working and work-related
activities includes time spent traveling to and from
work, as well as time spent traveling for work-related,
income-generating, and job search activities.
Educational activities. Educational activities
include taking classes (including Internet and other
distance-learning courses) for a degree as well as for
personal interest; doing research and homework; and
taking care of administrative tasks related to
education, such as registering for classes or obtaining
a school ID. For high school students, before- and
after-school extracurricular activities (except sports)
also are classified as educational activities.
Educational activities do not include time spent for
classes or training received as part of a job. Time
spent helping others with their education-related
activities is classified in the Caring for and helping
categories.
Organizational, civic, and religious activities.
This category captures time spent volunteering for or
through an organization, performing civic obligations,
and participating in religious and spiritual
activities. Civic obligations include government-
required duties, such as serving jury duty or appearing
in court, and activities that assist or influence
government processes, such as voting or attending town
hall meetings. Religious activities include those
normally associated with membership in or
identification with specific religions or
denominations, such as attending religious services;
participating in choirs, youth groups, orchestras, or
unpaid teaching (unless identified as volunteer
activities); and engaging in personal religious
practices, such as praying.
Leisure and sports. The leisure and sports category
includes sports, exercise, and recreation; socializing
and communicating; and other leisure activities.
Sports, exercise, and recreation activities include
participating in--as well as attending or
watching--sports, exercise, and recreational
activities. Recreational activities are leisure
activities that are active in nature, such as yard
games like croquet or horseshoes. Socializing and
communicating includes face-to-face social
communication and hosting or attending social
functions. Leisure activities include watching tele-
vision; reading; relaxing or thinking; playing
computer, board, or card games; using a computer or the
Internet for personal interest; playing or listening to
music; and other activities, such as attending arts,
cultural, and entertainment events.
Telephone calls, mail, and e-mail. This category
captures telephone communication and handling household
or personal mail or e-mail. Telephone and Internet
purchases are classified in Purchasing goods and
services. Telephone calls, mail, or e-mail identified
as related to work or volunteering are classified as
work or volunteering.
Other activities, not elsewhere classified. This
residual category includes security procedures related
to traveling, traveling not associated with a specific
activity category, ambiguous activities that could not
be coded, and missing activities. Missing activities
result when respondents did not remember what they did
for a period of time, or when they considered an
activity too private or personal to report.
Processing and estimation
After ATUS data are collected, they go through an
editing and imputation procedure. Responses to CPS
questions that are re-asked in the ATUS go through the
regular CPS edit and imputation procedures. Some item
nonresponses for questions unique to the ATUS (such as
where an activity took place or how much time was spent
doing secondary childcare) also are imputed. Missing
activities and missing values for who was present
during an activity are never imputed.
ATUS records are weighted quarterly to reduce bias
in the estimates due to differences in sampling and
response rates across subpopulations and days of the
week. Specifically, the data are weighted to ensure
the following:
-- Weekdays represent about 5/7 of the weighted data,
and weekend days each represent about 1/7 of the
weighted data for the population as a whole. The
actual proportions depend on the number of weekdays
and weekend days in a given quarter.
-- The sum of the weights is equal to the number of
person-days in the quarter for the population as a
whole and for selected subpopulations.
Reliability of the estimates
Statistics based on the ATUS are subject to both
sampling and nonsampling error. When a sample, rather
than the entire population, is surveyed, estimates
differ from the true population values they represent.
The component of this difference that occurs because
samples differ by chance is known as sampling error,
and its variability is measured by the standard error
of the estimate. Sample estimates from a given survey
design are unbiased when an average of the estimates
from all possible samples would yield, hypothetically,
the true population value. In this case, the sample
estimate and its standard error can be used to
construct approximate confidence intervals, or ranges
of values that include the true population value with
known probabilities. If the process of selecting a
sample from the population were repeated many times, an
estimate made from each sample, and a suitable estimate
of its standard error calculated for each sample, then
approximately 90 percent of the intervals from 1.645
standard errors below the estimate to 1.645 standard
errors above the estimate would include the true
population value. BLS analyses are generally conducted
at the 90-percent level of confidence.
The ATUS data also are affected by nonsampling error,
which is the average difference between population
and sample values for samples generated by a given
process. Nonsampling error can occur for many
reasons, including the failure to sample a segment of
the population, inability to obtain information for all
respondents in the sample, inability or unwillingness
of respondents to provide correct information, and
errors made in the collection or processing of the
data. Errors also could occur if non-response is
correlated with time use.
Estimates of average hours per day and participation
rates are not published unless there are a minimum
number of respondents representing the given
population. Additional publication criteria are applied
that include the number of respondents who reported
doing a specified activity and the standard error or
coefficient of variation for the estimate. Estimates
that are considered "close to zero" or that round to
0.00, are published as approximately zero or "~0." For
a detailed description of the statistical reliability
criteria necessary for publication, please contact ATUS
staff at ATUSinfo@bls.gov.
