This was a randomized survey experiment to gauge the relative accuracy of the widespread use of 24-hour recall to collect time use data, and to experiment with the use of innovative techniques that could sidestep concerns regarding the inability of the prevailing approaches to comprehensively capture activities irrespective of their regularity, saliency, and simultaneity.
The goal will be to advance the validation of scalable best practices to individual-level data collection on time use, which could in turn be considered for implementation as part of national household and farm surveys implemented by national statistical offices (NSOs). The activity will be implemented under the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) survey program (
www.worldbank.org/lsms), in collaboration with technical partners.
PALMCoL commented on the design of the study, the instruments and the procedures to be followed and obtained ethical approval. A number of activities were implemented during the experiment, including: We recruited and trained the Research Assistants. Training was conducted jointly with the World Bank, the University of University of Hohenheim, and the National Statistical Office over a period of three weeks. Implementation of the experiment involved: Sensitization Meetings, Household Listing, Household Interviews, Time Tracker App on smart phones, wearing of accelerometers to show people’s activity levels, the traditional 7-hour and 7-day recall and Anthropometry Assessments. The experiment targeted 1080 households and in the recruited households 2,160 subjects were recruited for the various activities. A number of papers are being drafted but an online dissemination has already been done.