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Abstract
BackgroundThis section defined time use (TU) research, illustrating its relevance for public health. TUR in the health context is the study of health-enhancing and health-compromising behaviours that are assessed across a 24 h day. The central measurement is the use of Time Use Diaries, which capture 24–48 h, typically asking about behaviour in each 15-min period. TUR is used for understanding correlates of health behaviours, and as a form of population surveillance, assessing behavioural trends over time.Main bodyThis paper is a narrative review examining the history of time use research, and the potential uses of TU data for public health research. The history of TUR started in studies of the labour force and patterns of work in the late 19th and early twentieth century, but has more recently been applied to examining health issues. Initial studies had a more economic purpose but over recent decades, TU data have been used to describe the distribution and correlates of health-enhancing patterns of human time use. These studies require large multi-country population data sets, such as the harmonised Multinational Time Use Study hosted at the University of Oxford. TU data are used in physical activity research, as they provide information across the 24-h day, that can be examined as time spent sleeping, sitting/standing/light activity, and time spent in moderate-vigorous activities. TU data are also used for sleep research, examining eating and dietary patterns, exploring geographic distributions in time use behaviours, examining mental health and subjective wellbeing, and examining these data over time. The key methodological challenge has been the development of harmonised methods, so population TU data sets can be compared within and between-countries and over time.ConclusionsTUR provides new methods for examining public health research questions where a temporal dimension is important. These time use surveys have provided unique data over decades and in many countries that can be compared. They can be used for examining the effects of some large public health interventions or policies within and between countries.
Highlights
ConclusionsTUR provides new methods for examining public health research questions where a temporal dimension is important
The history of time use There is a surprisingly long history of time-diary studies, with initial work focusing on describing social conditions, monitoring economic productivity and providing labour force information
What is time use research? Public health researchers are becoming interested in the behaviours and attributes that can be measured across the 24 h day, and in the interrelationships of health-enhancing and health-compromising behaviour across a temporal spectrum
Summary
Maintaining TUDs is a worthwhile investment for health-related research, to maintain longterm cross-national, comparable trend information. TUD provides trend information on aspects of social inequalities, another fundamental precept of public health research. Technology will complement self-report TUDs, and provide additional data and new ways of collecting time use information. These new methods may facilitate inexpensive larger scale data collections, but may pose new challenges, such as maintaining representativeness in sampling, and preserving backwards comparability with the decades of TUDs using traditional survey methods. TUD remains as a valuable, and under-utilised, public health data resource, which can help to explain the present, and track trends over many decades, in a way that is unique among any population measurements
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