Adding eldercare questions to the American time use survey

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 135, Issue 11, 2012, Pages 26-35

  Denton, Stephanie L ^a  

^a BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84871598773     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. "American Time Use Survey-2011 Results," USDL-12-1246 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 22, 2012), http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf; and "Eldercare in 2011" (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011), http://www.bls.gov/tus/2011_eldercare_factsheet.htm.
2. "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Sex and Five-Year Age Group for the United States: April 1, 2010 to July, 2011," Table 1 (U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, July 2011), http://www.census.gov/popest/data/national/asrh/2011/index.html.
3. Baby boomers are persons born between the years 1946 and 1964. Grayson K. Vincent and Victoria A. Velkoff, "THE NEXT FOUR DECADES, The Older Population in the United States: 2010 to 2050," Current Population Reports, P25-113 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010), http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p25-1138.pdf.
4. Karen D. Pyke and Vern L. Bengtson, "Caring more or less: Individualistic and collectivist systems of family eldercare," Journal of Marriage and Family, May 1996, pp. 379-393.
5. Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being, Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics (Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, July 2010), p. 63.
6. Robin Fleming and Anne Spellerberg, Using Time Use Data: A History of Time Use Surveys and Uses of Time Use Data (Wellington, New Zealand, Statistics New Zealand, February 1999), p. 29, http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/time_use/using-time-use-data.aspx.
7. Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing technology is used to collect the ATUS data by telephone
8. For more information on the ATUS design and collection procedures, please see the American Time Use Survey User's Guide: http://www.bls.gov/tus/atususersguide.pdf.
9. For more information on childcare measures in the ATUS
10. Mary Dorinda Allard, Suzanne Bianchi, Jay Stewart, and Vanessa R. Wight, "Comparing childcare measures in the ATUS and earlier time-diary studies," Monthly Labor Review, May 2007, pp. 27-36, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/05/art3full.pdf.
11. Robert Drago, "The parenting of infants: a time use study," Monthly Labor Review, October 2009, pp. 33-43, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/10/art3full.pdf; and Allard, "Comparing childcare measures in the ATUS, pp. 27-36.
12. The dependent care question that was tested was, "In addition to the activities you just told me about, we are interested in finding out about the time you spent looking after adults and children 13 and older who cannot take care of themselves because of a physical or psychological problem. Yesterday, did you spend any time looking after anyone living in the household 13 or older who cannot or should not be left alone because of a physical or psychological problem? Please tell me when you were looking after [name]."
13. Andrew E. Scharlach and Karen I. Fredriksen, "Elder care versus adult care: Does care recipient age make a difference?" Research on Aging, March 1994, pp. 1, 43-68.
14. For more information about cognitive testing of the American Time Use Survey
15. Lisa K. Schwartz, "The American Time Use Survey: cognitive pretesting," Monthly Labor Review, February 2002, pp. 34-44, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/02/art2full.pdf.
16. Judy Singleton, "Women Caring for Elderly Family Members: Shaping Non-traditional Work and Family Initiatives. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, June 22, 2000, pp. 367-75; and National Alliance for Caregiving and American Association of Retired Persons, "Caregiving in the U.S.," April 2004, http://www.caregiving.org/data/04finalreport.pdf.
17. National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, Survey on Aging and Support, November 2009; and Statistics Canada, 2002, General Social Survey, Cycle 16
18. Sidney Katz, Amasa B. Ford, Roland W. Moskowitz, Beverly A. Jackson, and Marjorie W. Jaffe, "Studies of Illness in the Aged," The Journal of the American Medical Association, September 21, 1963, pp. 94-99.
19. M. Powell Lawton and Elaine Brody, "Assessment of Older People: Self-Maintaining and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living," Gerontologist, Autumn 1969, pp. 179-86.
20. Statistics Canada. 2002 General Social Survey, Cycle 16, Survey on Aging and Support.
21. Respondents to the ATUS are interviewed one time only about yesterday's activities. However, one can compare the time use of eldercare providers who provided care on their diary day with the time use of eldercare providers who did not provide care on their diary day to analyze how their time use pattern differs.
22. From 2005 to 2010, ATUS respondents were asked a series of questions about trips away from home for two or more nights in a row, during a specific reference month. However, these trips data were little used. To avoid lengthening the survey or impose additional production costs, BLS dropped the trip questions when the eldercare questions were added.
23. Since its inception in 2003, the ATUS has successfully used summary questions to identify times when survey respondents were providing secondary childcare and to clearly identify work and volunteer activities
24. All ATUS data files are free to download at http://www.bls.gov/tus/data.htm. More information on these data files, including variable definitions, is provided in our data dictionaries, available online at http://www.bls.gov/tus/dictionaries.htm.