Increasing the Usability of the American Time Use Survey: IPUMS ATUS

Kari C. W. Williams (), Sarah M. Flood, Liana C. Sayer and Julia A. Rivera Drew
Additional contact information
Kari C. W. Williams: IPUMS Center for Data Integration, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Sarah M. Flood: IPUMS Center for Data Integration, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Liana C. Sayer: Maryland Time Use Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Julia A. Rivera Drew: IPUMS Center for Data Integration, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Data, 2025, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: This paper describes IPUMS ATUS, which simplifies the use of time diary data by disseminating a harmonized and enhanced version of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS time diary data capture the detailed activities over a 24 h period for thousands of respondents along with their sociodemographic characteristics. The ability to measure, at a population level, how people spend their time provides nearly endless possibilities for examining questions that hinge on understanding human behavior. The flexible data format can be used to estimate time use as captured by stylized survey questions (e.g., sleep duration, work hours), but it also allows for the study of activity sequencing and the context of time use (e.g., where it happens, who else is present). However, wrangling the complex, hierarchical record structure of the data requires advanced programming skills. To address these challenges, IPUMS ATUS harmonizes the ATUS data and provides customization tools that allow researchers to (i) combine data from multiple original ATUS files and (ii) easily create and save custom variables that summarize time use utilizing the full array of contextual information spread across the complex record structure of the ATUS.

Keywords: time use; IPUMS; harmonization; data infrastructure; data access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/10/11/189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/10/11/189/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jdataj:v:10:y:2025:i:11:p:189-:d:1794519

Access Statistics for this article

Data is currently edited by Ms. Becky Zhang

More articles in Data from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().