Comparability — United States [top]

Eating and drinking as a secondary activity is included in the US (2006-2008), but is not asked in the way most time use surveys ask about secondary activities. Participants were asked if they drank anything other than water or ate during each activity. If participants answered yes to either, they then were asked how long during that episode they spent eating, and separately how long they spent drinking. The sum of these two reported times sometimes exceeds the total minutes of the episode, which means that some secondary eating overlapped with some secondary drinking. Where the sum of secondary eating and drinking time equaled or exceeded the episode length, the participant did not report a child being in their care, and there was no instance of unreported short duration travel, we code secondary eating and drinking for the entire episode.

Where reported minutes in secondary eating/drinking are less than the total time of the episode, we divide the episode into three segments. We put the secondary eating/drinking time in the middle of the episode. If the number of minutes left after deducting secondary eating/drinking time is not an even number, we make a full minute rounding and put the longer sub-episode at the beginning. Otherwise we truncate on an even minute.

In cases where the participant did not report a main activity but did report secondary eating/drinking and the participant indicated being at home, if the secondary eating episode is between social activities, we add in home social as a main activity. In other instances at home, we add imputed personal and household care as the main activity.

For the limited number of episodes where the diarist must have travelled during a short trip to change location and reported secondary eating and drinking, we create two episodes, the first with secondary eating/drinking and the second with travel by unreported means. Where the total episode length is less than 20 minutes, we set the secondary travel to 2 minutes duration, and the remainder to secondary eating. Where the episode lasted 20 minutes or more, we set the secondary travel to 10 minutes.

Where participants reported that a child was in their care and that they engaged in secondary eating or drinking (in these instances, the secondary eating and drinking equals the total episode time), we split the episode into three segments. We put the secondary eating/drinking in the middle sub-episode and set this sub-episode equal to half the total time of the original episode. We then set the first and third sub-episodes to 25% of the time of the original episode, and code these sub-episodes as including time when a child was under the participant's care. We made this decision as people face limits to the number of things on which they can concentrate at one time, and so that participants can identify this pattern in the data and construct their own alternative secondary care variable should they wish to do so. See the syntax files that created the harmonized files for more details.

In 2011 and 2012 the respondents were asked whether they provide secondary elderly care. When both secondary childcare and secondary eldercare are reported simultaneously we coded these as secondary elderly care.