Measuring Work-Life Balance and Degrees of Sociability: A Focus on the Value of Time Use Data in the Assessment of Quality of Life

This paper investigates the role which time diaries can play in the study of work-life balance. The paper first briefly reviews concepts relevant to defining a work-life balance, then draws on three data sets to explore options for measuring this concept: the Multinational Time Use Studies (MTUS), UK 2000-2001 National Time Use Study, one component study of the Harmonised European Time Use Studies (HETUS) project, and the European Community Household Panel Study (ECHP). The paper considers three sets of measures of work-life balance: 1) proportion of free time; 2) the overlap of work and other dimensions of life; and 3) time spent with other people. We first compare aggregate time spent in paid work, unpaid work, attending to personal needs, and free time across seven countries using the MTUS. Over the last four decades, people in Denmark and The Netherlands had more free time than people in Canada, Finland, Norway, the UK, and the USA. Having a child caused a loss of free time. The proportion of free time people enjoyed in these countries increased from the 1960s through the 1980s, but then receded in the 1990s. We then measure the overlap of work with other activities in three ways. First, we map the timing of episodes of work over the day, and overlay these maps onto maps of leisure time. A social group can be said to have a work-life balance if their peak periods of different activities do not overlap substantially. Second, we consider the degree to which people in the UK worked split shifts - that is had multiple episodes of work at divergent times of the day. The more shifts people make into and out of work mode, the more work can dominate their lives. The presence of split shifts does not in and of itself indicate damage to quality of life (indeed some workers prefer to arrange their work time in this manner), but split shifts can be damaging when overlapping with other strains on quality of life. Only a small percentage of the sample, 5.4% or men and 4.5% of women, worked split shifts. Our third strategy is the measure the total time spent performing multiple activities at the same time, and to compare periods of multi-tasking where work is the main focus while other activities occur simultaneously with multi-tasking where work occurs alongside another activity that is the main focus of the diarist's attention. Men in the UK spent an average of 14 minutes each day doing something else while working, and 15 minutes where work intruded into another activity. British women spent an average of 11 minutes doing something else while working, and 14 minutes where work intruded into another activity. People do not communicate with many members of their social networks on a daily basis. Consequently, to get a full picture of sociability, time diary data needs to be considered in conjunction with questionnaire data examining contact with social networks over longer periods of time. This paper demonstrates that the patterns of sociability vary across European Community member states, and that the association between limited sociability and poverty risk is complex. In 1998, the Irish, British, and people in Southern European countries tended to spend more time seeing other people, and Danes were most likely to be members of clubs and organisations. Diaries compliment measures of sociability by revealing what people are doing when alone and with other people. People who felt rushed or were unsure if they were rushed spent more time alone than people who reported feeling rushed sometimes or always. In part this finding reflects the fact that people caring for adults or children spent less time alone and were more likely to feel rushed, though many diarists feeling rushed were not carers. Contrary to the observations Putnam has made in the USA, most British people ate with other people, usually eating with family at home and with friends in restaurants and cafes. The two activities which British people most often performed alone were care of pets (which is not really alone) and commuting to work. All analysis is broken down by sex and age. There are many qualifications on these results, and the results in this paper are exemplary of what can be done rather than definitive findings.