Research

Research in the Centre for Time Use Research.

Activities

We aim to advance the collection and application of rigorously collected population-representative samples of time use diary data, and to conduct research into a wide range of issues in the human and social sciences using this data.

CTUR has been an ESRC research centre since 2014. Our ESRC research centre designation (until 2024) involves a range of activities including:

  • collecting new UK national time diary studies 
  • developing and piloting advanced diary instruments using motion sensors
  • body cameras GPS alongside conventional paper and internet based diaries and apps, as well as
  • maintaining and extending the Multinational Time Use Study.

Projects

New Frontiers in Time Use Research (NFTUR)

An ESRC responsive mode grant, which continues the dual resource and research role for the centre, funds the development of new time use data collection methods and of improvements to the MTUS, as well as projects on time-diary-based accounts of economic circumstances and well-being, on work, self-employment and unemployment, children’s time-use and life-outcomes, gender and work/life balance, eating and exercise, sleep, daily/weekly rhythms of work and leisure, and connections between work, ICT and wellbeing.

Social Change and Everyday Life (SCaEL)

An ERC advanced grant funding a programme of social research using time use diary data, with topics including time use and inequality, public regulation and the work-leisure balance, instantaneous utility measurement and integrated national accounts of wellbeing, embodied capital accumulation and social position, individual activity sequencing and long-term time-use estimation.

PARENTIME

An ERC consolidator grant to develop new socio-economic theories that unpack the detailed mechanisms driving the inter-generational transmission of inequality. The research takes a theoretically-driven Big Data approach by linking large representative 24-hour diary survey data of parents and children with very comprehensive and detailed information on child outcomes from administrative data to:

  1. go beyond the quantity of parental time to explore the inter-connections between family members and their role in the child’s acquisition of human capital (i.e., the timing and sequence, co-presence, multi-tasking, and instantaneous parental enjoyment).
  2. establish long-term effects of parental time investments by looking at a comprehensive set of child human capital measures all the way into the child’s adult life.
  3. arrive at a well-coordinated scientific approach, starting at the micro-sequential level of parents and children’s everyday life and building progressively to a macro understanding of the (re)production of socio-economic inequality.

The Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS)

MTUS is our flagship time use diary data archive, with currently over 85 nationally representative surveys from 25 countries, a total of 1.5 million diary days covering the period 1961 to 2015. 

We are the data providers for IPUMS.

The time use diary data archive

CTUR has pioneered this archive, locating surviving national time use surveys and persuading the original owners of the data to release the material. We reconstitute the samples, and recode both the diary and the ancillary questionnaire materials into "lowest common denominator" classificatory systems, then archive both the original and the derived MTUS files, and release the latter without charge (with more than 1,500 research users so far).

Around 8 surveys are added each year, and we regularly review data availability to add extra harmonised materials to existing files.

Geographical regions

Current coverage is largely of Western Europe, North America and Australia, but we are expanding to add new geographical regions incorporating new types of welfare regime. We are now processing newly acquired materials from Eastern Europe, in addition to large studies from India and Pakistan, and considering adding historical data from developing countries.

Publications