Using New Technologies for Time Diary Data Collection: Instrument Design and Data Quality Findings from a Mixed-Mode Pilot Survey

Stella Chatzitheochari (), Kimberly Fisher, Emily Gilbert, Lisa Calderwood, Tom Huskinson, Andrew Cleary and Jonathan Gershuny
Additional contact information
Stella Chatzitheochari: University of Warwick
Kimberly Fisher: University of Oxford
Emily Gilbert: UCL Institute of Education
Lisa Calderwood: UCL Institute of Education
Tom Huskinson: Ipsos MORI
Andrew Cleary: Ipsos MORI
Jonathan Gershuny: University of Oxford

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 137, issue 1, No 18, 379-390

Abstract: Abstract Recent years have witnessed a steady growth of time-use research, driven by the increased research and policy interest in population activity patterns and their associations with long-term outcomes. There is recent interest in moving beyond traditional paper-administered time diaries to use new technologies for data collection in order to reduce respondent burden and administration costs, and to improve data quality. This paper presents two novel diary instruments that were employed by a large-scale multi-disciplinary cohort study in order to obtain information on the time allocation of adolescents in the United Kingdom. A web-administered diary and a smartphone app were created, and a mixed-mode data collection approach was followed: cohort members were asked to choose between these two modes, and those who were unable or refused to use the web/app modes were offered a paper diary. Using data from a pilot survey of 86 participants, we examine diary data quality indicators across the three modes. Results suggest that the web and app modes yield an overall better time diary data quality than the paper mode, with a higher proportion of diaries with complete activity and contextual information. Results also show that the web and app modes yield a comparable number of activity episodes to the paper mode. These results suggest that the use of new technologies can improve diary data quality. Future research using larger samples should systematically investigate selection and measurement effects in mixed-mode time-use survey designs.

Keywords: Time diaries; Time-use research; New technologies; Methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-017-1569-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:soinre:v:137:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-017-1569-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1569-5

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().