Measuring time at work: Are self-reports accurate?

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 121, Issue 12, 1998, Pages 42-52

  Jacobs, Jerry A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0347653374     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Thomas J. Kneisner, "Review Essay: The Overworked American?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. 28, no. 33, pp. 681-88; Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose, "Overworked and Underemployed: Unraveling an Economic Enigma," The American Prospect, March-April 1997, pp. 58-69; and Jerry A. Jacobs, and Kathleen Gerson, "The Endless Day or the Flexible Office? Working Hours, Work-Family Conflict, and Gender Equity in the Modem Workplace." Report for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 1997.
2. Thomas J. Kneisner, "Review Essay: The Overworked American?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. 28, no. 33, pp. 681-88; Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose, "Overworked and Underemployed: Unraveling an Economic Enigma," The American Prospect, March-April 1997, pp. 58-69; and Jerry A. Jacobs, and Kathleen Gerson, "The Endless Day or the Flexible Office? Working Hours, Work-Family Conflict, and Gender Equity in the Modem Workplace." Report for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 1997.
3. Thomas J. Kneisner, "Review Essay: The Overworked American?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. 28, no. 33, pp. 681-88; Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose, "Overworked and Underemployed: Unraveling an Economic Enigma," The American Prospect, March-April 1997, pp. 58-69; and Jerry A. Jacobs, and Kathleen Gerson, "The Endless Day or the Flexible Office? Working Hours, Work-Family Conflict, and Gender Equity in the Modem Workplace." Report for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 1997.
4. Arlie R. Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (New York, Metropolitan Books, 1997).
5. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and Cornell West, The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1998); Rosalind C. Barnett, "Home-to-Work Spillover Revisited: A Study of Full-Time Employed Women in Dual-Earner Couples," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1994, vol. 56, pp. 647-56; and Ellen Galinsky, James T. Bond, and Dana E. Friedman, The Changing Workforce: Highlights of the National Study (New York, Families and Work Institute, 1993).
6. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and Cornell West, The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1998); Rosalind C. Barnett, "Home-to-Work Spillover Revisited: A Study of Full-Time Employed Women in Dual-Earner Couples," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1994, vol. 56, pp. 647-56; and Ellen Galinsky, James T. Bond, and Dana E. Friedman, The Changing Workforce: Highlights of the National Study (New York, Families and Work Institute, 1993).
7. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, and Cornell West, The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1998); Rosalind C. Barnett, "Home-to-Work Spillover Revisited: A Study of Full-Time Employed Women in Dual-Earner Couples," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1994, vol. 56, pp. 647-56; and Ellen Galinsky, James T. Bond, and Dana E. Friedman, The Changing Workforce: Highlights of the National Study (New York, Families and Work Institute, 1993).
8. John P. Robinson, and Geoffrey Godbey, Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); and John P. Robinson and Ann Bostrom, "The over- estimated workweek? What the time diary measures suggest," Monthly Labor Review, August 1994, pp. 11-23.
9. John P. Robinson, and Geoffrey Godbey, Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); and John P. Robinson and Ann Bostrom, "The over-estimated workweek? What the time diary measures suggest," Monthly Labor Review, August 1994, pp. 11-23.
10. Philip L. Rones, Randy E. Ilg, and Jennifer M. Gardner, "Trends in the hours of work since the mid-1970s," Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pp. 3-14; and Jacobs, and Gerson, "The Endless Day?" The Current Population Survey is a monthly survey of more than 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
11. Philip L. Rones, Randy E. Ilg, and Jennifer M. Gardner, "Trends in the hours of work since the mid-1970s," Monthly Labor Review, April 1997, pp. 3-14; and Jacobs, and Gerson, "The Endless Day?" The Current Population Survey is a monthly survey of more than 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
12. Juliet Schor, The Overworked American (New York, Basic Books, 1991).
13. Hourly wages are typically computed by dividing earnings by hours worked. If the true working time were less than reported working time, the hourly wage would be higher. The potential concentration of this effect among high earners would inflate estimates of inequality and the returns to education, and affect analyses of other behavior that is associated with wages. See Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, "Changes in Work Hours of Male Employees, 1940-1988," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 46, no. 2, 1993, pp. 262-83. Also see Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, "Trends in Market Work Behavior of Women Since 1940." Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 46, no. 4, 1993, pp. 653-76.
14. Hourly wages are typically computed by dividing earnings by hours worked. If the true working time were less than reported working time, the hourly wage would be higher. The potential concentration of this effect among high earners would inflate estimates of inequality and the returns to education, and affect analyses of other behavior that is associated with wages. See Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, "Changes in Work Hours of Male Employees, 1940-1988," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 46, no. 2, 1993, pp. 262-83. Also see Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, "Trends in Market Work Behavior of Women Since 1940." Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 46, no. 4, 1993, pp. 653-76.
15. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects another series of data based on employer reports (establishment data) regarding production workers, but this does not cover the entire labor force and it does not allow for an understanding of individuals who may hold more than one job. See Employment and Earnings (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 1997) for a comparison of household and establishment data series.
16. Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 1997.
17. Willard L. Rodgers, Charles Brown, and Greg J. Duncan, "Errors in Survey Reports of Earnings, Hours Worked, and Hourly Wages," Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 88, no. 424, 1993, pp. 1208- 18; and John Bound, Charles Brown, Greg. J. Duncan, and Willard L. Rodgers, "Evidence on the Validity of Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Labor Market Data." Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 12, no. 3, 1994, pp. 345-68.
18. Willard L. Rodgers, Charles Brown, and Greg J. Duncan, "Errors in Survey Reports of Earnings, Hours Worked, and Hourly Wages," Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 88, no. 424, 1993, pp. 1208- 18; and John Bound, Charles Brown, Greg. J. Duncan, and Willard L. Rodgers, "Evidence on the Validity of Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Labor Market Data." Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 12, no. 3, 1994, pp. 345-68.
19. Robinson and Bostrom, "The overestimated workweek?"; and Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life. In the time-diary approach, respondents are asked to recall all of their activities during 24 hours of a day.
20. Robinson and Bostrom, "The overestimated workweek?"; and Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life. In the time-diary approach, respondents are asked to recall all of their activities during 24 hours of a day.
21. A weekly diary might avoid this problem, but it is even more expensive to collect. Moreover, the accuracy of time-diary data over the period of a week has yet to be determined. It could be that respondents would tire of filling out diaries after a few days, and might become increasingly sloppy in their reporting and forgetful of the activities in which they engaged.
22. Barbara Schneider, Mihaly Csikszentmikhalyi, and Shaunti Knauth, "Academic Challenge, Motivation and Self-Esteem: The Daily Experiences of High School Students," in Maureen T. Hallinan, ed., Restructuring Schools: Promising Practices and Policies (New York, Plenum, 1995), pp. 175-95.
23. Mihaly Csikszentmikhalyi, K. Rathunde, and S. Whalen, Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure (London, Cambridge University Press, 1993). In their book, the authors solve the problem of aggregating measures of particular moments into a weekly schedule by reporting the percentage of time spent in various activities, rather than the amount of time. The aggregation issue might well be more challenging for the estimation of adult work schedules.
24. A more detailed measure would ask respondents to indicate the departure and return times for each day in the survey week or the previous week. This would avoid the potential problem of misreports about what is a "typical" day. However, the last section of this article uses the "typical day" as a reference period, which might average out responses and result in a more reliable measure.
25. On the other hand, measuring time away from home misses time spent working at home.
26. Galinsky and others, The Changing Workforce, 1993.
27. In nearly three-fifths of the cases, the corrected calculation improved the match with self-reported hours by 60 hours per week (a 12-hour change per day over a 5-day workweek). Most of the other changes were also sizable: 83.8 percent of the corrections involved an improvement in fit of 48 hours per week or more.
28. Greater life satisfaction is associated with greater exaggeration for women, but this effect is small, is not evident for men, and is not consistent with expectations. Job satisfaction and working to a high percentage of one's capacity are both associated with greater exaggeration for men, but neither effect persists in a multivariate analysis.
29. Results are available from the author via e-mail: jjacobs@sas.upenn.edu.
30. Results are available from the author via e-mail: jjacobs@sas.upenn.edu.
31. It may be possible to ask respondents about the length of the typical workweek, in addition to the hours spent working last week. This type of question might have the same properties as the "last year" measure without the drawback of forcing people to think about their work situation a year ago.
32. Rodgers and others, "Errors in survey reports," pp. 1208-18.