Readme for UK 1974-75

README FILE FOR UK1974-75

(World 5.5 – Release 3; World 5.8 & World 6.0 Release -1)

12 October 2011

CONTENTS:

Technical description of the survey

Information on the original files

Time-use variables

Variable-specific information

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SURVEY

INFORMATION ON THE ORIGINAL FILES

The original files required some cleaning (code available from the Centre for Time Use Research). The amended original files used to create the MTUS version of this dataset are:

Edem.sav contains person and household level demographic information.

Edayseq.savcontains time diary data

TIME-USE VARIABLES

Activity Variable Documentation for UK, 1974-1975

Notes

The original diary only covered the period from 5:00-2:00(in the next day). For the period 4:00-5:00, the location and activity at 5:00 (and where a possibility the person was at work or travelling home at this time, the end of the diary on the previous day) are used to estimatethe activity and location for this hour. For the period 2:00-4:00, the activity and location at 2:00 are used to estimate the activity and location at the end of the diary day. In most cases (over 92%), the diarists were at home and asleep at 2:00 and at 5:00 – and in these cases the uncollected time is recorded as sleep at home.

As these time slots cover 30 minutes and people had to select a main activity, short trips are missing from the diaries. Instances of missing trips identified by circumstances where the previous activity is an activity and a location away from home and the following activity is at home, or the previous activity takes place at home and the following activity and location is away from home and no travel is coded in the previous or following activity. In these circumstances, 25 minutes of the two slots coded as the original coded activity and 5 minutes coded as travel. This produces 50 minutes for the hour including a missed trip using the original codes and 10 minutes of travel. The travel type (AV5, 12, 17) defined by the activity recorded in the half-hour slot.

In earlier versions of the MTUS, the code erroneously assigned some codes. Code 35 (meal breaks) was all assigned to paid work – many of these codes apply to work meal breaks, but some do not, creating some short work episodes on days when people were not working – see code above for how location used to determine where to code 35 (meal breaks) (now split between AV1 – paid work; AV15 – eat, drink; and AV28 – restaurants). Code 50 (other essential domestic work) moved from AV8 – odd jobs, to AV7 – housework. Code 59 (arrive home) was wrongly assigned to AV36 – relax; and now is split between AV7 – housework and AV13 – dress, personal care.

There is one set of cases where we changed secondary activity codes into main activity codes. There are a number of cases where the main activity is either at home or at the workplace and the secondary activity is travel to or from work. Also, these situations sit at points of transition to new locations. As people cannot both be in the office or at home and also travelling, we assume that people dealt with short trips by recording the first 20 minutes as the main activity and the last 10 minutes as the travel and changing the secondary activity to no recorded secondary activity.

The location codes are 1=at home, then away from home, then not home or staying away from home and by or not by a radio. Most location codes taken from activity.

VARIABLE-SPECIFIC INFORMATION

The following variables could not be created:

CARER

CITIZEN

COHAB

COMPUTER

DISAB

EMPINCLM

HEALTH

INCORIG

OWNHOME

RUSHED

SECTOR

TENURE

AGEKID2

While this variable not directly available for all cases, some years are correctly coded (0, 1, and some ages where the diarist is the youngest person in the household.) In other cases the age of the youngest child is taken as the mid-point of the range. Age=3 represents the age range 2 to 4. Some values of 8 represent ages 5 to 11. Some values of 14 represent the range 12-16.

CIVSTAT/COHAB

This variable had to be constructed from a number of variables, as the mode of collection of this information varied by wave. Cohabitation was not possible to construct in this dataset.

EDUCA

Only the information on the age when leaving school is available in the original dataset. The variable ‘slage’ was used to compute EDUCA. The value labels for EDUCA are as follows:

1 'Leave school at age 15 or less'

2 '16'

3 '17'

4 '18'

5 '19'

6 '20'

7 '21 or more'

8 'still studying'

HHLDSIZE

The number ‘12’ in HHLDSIZE refers to 12 people or more.

HLDID

The original survey did not record a household identifier. Nevertheless, diaries from the same household are entered in order. There was an original variable called ID which marked the order in which the diaries were entered. Also, there is a person identifier variable, and no two people share a persid value in the same household. The file was sorted by ID, then the household identifier constructed through grouping consecutive sets of diaries which do not share common persid values and which have the same value for the variables: region, areatype, tvregion, address, hhsize, ykids, okids and adults. This step was performed at the Centre for Time Use Research, and the syntax for this step of the procedure is available separately from CTUR.

INCOME

No income variables, however, there are two related variables, FOS, family occupation status (A, B, C1, C2, D, E + unemployed + pension, students), and SOCLASS (social grade of household, A, B, C). The combination of these creates a 3 category distribution which will be related to income level of the household. Nonetheless, this is not the same as income. Users should consider carefully whether to use this variable for this study.