Time Use

Expanding Explanation in the Social Sciences

William H. Michelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781594511738
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317250401
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Many researchers have studied people's everyday use of time. National and international agencies increasingly collect and analyze time-use data. Yet this perspective and its techniques remain a black box to most social science researchers and applied practitioners, and the potential of time-use data to expand explanation in the social sciences is not fully recognized by even most time-use researchers. Sociologist William Michelson's unique book places the study of time-use data in perspective, demystifies its collection and analytic options, and carefully examines the potential of time-use analysis for a wide range of benefits to the social sciences. These include the sampling of otherwise socially "hidden" groups, bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative phenomena, gender studies, family dynamics, multitasking, social networks, built environments, and risk exposure.

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Time-Use: Strategic Value from a Ubiquitous Resource

INTRODUCTION

Time is ubiquitous in the lives of human beings. Yet, time is only exceptionally found among the insights applied by the social sciences. It is only logical to expect that an inherent dimension and resource in people’s lives will help inform the dynamics of human behavior. In this book, I shall examine what the careful study of time-use adds to explanation and understanding in the social sciences.

On the surface, one might imagine that the study of time-use entails the description of what people do with their time. Richard Scarry wrote a popular book, What Do People Do All Day? (1968), that has entertained generations of young children with pictures of animals doing tasks and jobs typical of people. It is an interesting form of scientific voyeurism to go beyond children’s books and learn from systematic data collection how one or another social group or nation typically spends its time. Do other people typically work or play more than I do?

However, in contrast, the gist of the present book is that time-use information opens the door much wider to new insights for the social sciences—more as a strategic means of examining the various parameters of behavior for analytic gains on a range of questions, not exclusively as a focus on time for its own sake. According to this argument, the impact of time-use research is optimized when focusing clearly measured behavioral components of the metric of time on the greater range of situations and issues in the surrounding world, the dynamics of society. Analytically advanced ways of thinking about and then measuring time-use enable new ways of seeing the world, making possible new explanations and greater understanding.

Make no mistake. The introduction of time-use analysis to the understanding of different situations has already presented some unexpected, even startling, insights. Here are three examples.

Time in World Politics

Time-use researchers Günter Manz and Gerhard Lippold monitored the time-use of East Germans for more than a decade before the “fall of the wall.” They did it in order to spotlight and remedy obstacles to productivity there. Initial studies in the early 1970s made clear the plight of female industrial workers, with long workdays followed by labor-demanding domestic chores (cf. Gans, 1972; Lippold, 1972). As a result, the government provided greater access to food and laundry services. Studies in the mid-1970s showed that the most significant subsequent change among East German women was an increase of 30 minutes in the duration of their nighttime sleep (Manz, 1978). This was a disappointment to local economic planners, who had also hoped to find more time put into upgrading job skills. But from the insights of time-use analysis, the impact on women’s health was surely major. Nonetheless, when Manz was asked at a meeting of time-use researchers in 1988 what had materialized in the ensuing decade, he was bemused. “Now they’re watching TV,” he said, “and, worse yet, they’re watching West German TV!” Had time-use researchers gone beyond a restricted focus on time-use in that instance, what happened six months later might have been less of a surprise. One part of an explanation had been found. Eastern eyes were riveted on the Western standard of living.

Home-Based Employment and Gender

In response to an invitation by two Swedish architectural researchers, Karin Palm Lindén and Tomas Wikström, to join in a study of telework, I became convinced that time-use data could shed light on how the daily lives of teleworkers (and other home-based workers) might differ from persons with conventional workplaces. We found some differences (Wikström, Palm Lindén, and Michelson, 1998; Michelson, 2000). But I pursued the analysis more deeply into the comparison of men and women in this growing context of work. Surely, if men worked at home, with closer access to other family members and the household context, their daily activities would converge to a greater extent with those of women doing the same thing. Wrong. The two genders traded off significant amounts of time on paid work and household chores in the traditional direction. The male home-based workers spent more time than the women on their work; the women, on household chores. Could this be because women working at home were more likely to have dependent children than men? When only male and female home-based workers, both with dependent children at home, were analyzed, the gender differences in time-use were actually greater, not less (Michelson and Crouse, 2003a). In short, extending the time-use study of home-based workers into more complex sociological analysis aids in the understanding of gender dynamics as well.

Teachers: Time-Use and Economic Rationality

In the most recent decade, during periods of fiscal retrenchment, teachers in some jurisdictions have been asked to give up preparation time during school hours in order to teach an extra class. Decisionmakers considered it more economically rational for teachers to spend virtually all the teaching day in the classroom teaching students in formal classes. Teachers protested loudly, only to be labeled as slackers by the decisionmakers. Time-use research made it possible to view the work situation of teachers not only as a series of workplace activities, but from the analytic view of how work activities interface with other activities throughout the full day and week (Harvey and Spinney, 2000; Michelson and Harvey, 2000). Teachers are unusual in that they have to find time to prepare for their classroom activities, to mark student work, and to confer with students and supervise their extracurricular activities outside the time spent in classroom teaching. Much work typically takes place in the late afternoons and in evenings and on weekends at home. Most teachers, particularly the majority who are women, have extensive commitments of time on behalf of families and households. Time-use analysis with a longitudinal component shows that the stress levels among teachers studied increased during this decade of economic rationality in schools (Michelson and Crouse, 2003b). The study of time-use shows how economic considerations that exclude knowledge of time-use in this realm foster the forced relocation of time into periods when time is not available. It is not just the kind and amount of work time that matter; when, where, and in what pattern it occurs are important. Increased stress among teachers should not have been surprising.

The preceding examples go in different directions as a consequence of different applications and analytic approaches, but they start with similar bodies of information. While time might be ubiquitous, my approach to it is highly specific.

In Chapter 1, I will identify and describe a particular empirical method for time-use research and suggest in general terms some of the ways in which its analytic applications extend explanation and understanding in the social sciences. Next, in Chapters 2 and 3, I will demystify how time-use data are gathered and analytic directions are chosen, respectively. In subsequent chapters, I will give extended examples drawn from the literature and will illustrate from my own research how recently developed analytic techniques utilizing time-use data add to knowledge in selected realms of human life.

DISTINGUISHING TIME-USE ANALYSIS FROM “SOCIOLOGY OF TIME”

Sociology of Time

The ubiquity of time led to its “discovery” within the social sciences long before now, even if the fulfillment of its potential for exploitation did not. More than forty years ago, and influenced by the French sociologist, Georges Gurvitch, Wilbert E. Moore (1963, p. v) noted that:

The social sciences have tended to neglect the way the limits and flows of time intersect the persistent and changeful qualities of human enterprises for reasons that are only partly clear.

Moore wrote his book as “a modest attempt to enrich the sociological perspective on the orderly qualities of human action by viewing time both as a boundary condition and as the measure of persistence and change” (Moore, 1963, p. v). Moore took time as a fixed, scarce resource which acts upon people at different scales and within institutions of society in specific epochs, more specifically as a set of boundaries for behavior, with two main kinds of temporal ordering of people’s lives: the synchronization and sequencing of activities. These are not fixed or deterministic processes. But they are regularized by time and place, presenting generalized expectations for behavior. Moore’s argument was theoretical, although it rested on examples from the research of others, addressing how time synchronization and sequencing enter the behavioral dynamics of individuals, families, occupational and voluntary organizations, cities, the economy, and even the world and universe.

Moore’s perspective presents a clear image of how structural imperatives in specific societies can give rise to particular temporal boundaries and their constituent patterns of synchronization and sequencing of activity (for example, through industrialization and the creation of the working day and factory organization of activity). He leaves time as a theoretical set of processes between structural considerations and human behavior, in interaction with other explanatory factors. Time is a dimension of life that may be limited but which people nonetheless deploy. But Moore left to others the matter of how to deal with these factors empirically to show the respective impacts of time and other explanatory factors on human life.

Moore gives a keen feeling as to why most people have to tell time, so as to fulfill the requirements of their various institution-based roles. But he leaves a vacuum, to be addressed explicitly by the current volume, when it comes to what people’s use of time tells about the functioning (and issues) of their own society.

Nonetheless, Moore’s approach has been pursued in contemporary sociological theory, in large part, though apparently coincidentally, through the work of Anthony Giddens, who suggests that: “day-to-day conduct only has continuity through its involvement with institutionalized modes of activity” (1987, p. 145).

Space is a concept in many ways parallel to time, in that it is everywhere (except perhaps in the traditional mainstream of social science research) (cf. Michelson, 1970). Giddens took both time and space as essential ingredients in sociological explanation, alluding to the time-space paths of behavior espoused by time-geographers (and one foundation of the approach developed later in this book). Although he specifies the crucial concept of institutions as “patterns of social activity” duplicated with relative similarity “across time and space” (Giddens, 1982, p. 14), his explicit attention to time and space extends more fully to defining the similarities and differences among institutions in and between historical/economic epochs (time) and also geographic and cultural regions (space) (Giddens, 1993, Chapter 3). This theoretical influence in the use of time and space leads to extremely general uses of these terms in formulations of varying nature. Although time and space become part of theoretical considerations, they have minimal consistent meaning or empirical measurement in this theoretical approach (cf. Urry, 1991).

Adam (1990) summarizes Giddens’ treatment of time succinctly:

In his contemporary reworking of the conceptions of human being and doing, social reproduction and transformation, time therefore comes to be of central importance without ever being the explicit focus of his attention. (p. 10)

Eviatar Zerubavel took sociological conceptions of time, derived in part from Moore, in more tangible directions (cf. 1981, 1985). In a book “intended as an introduction to a new area of investigation—the sociology of time,” Zerubavel notes that “precisely because time is such a major parameter of the social world, its significant role in social life can no longer be ignored” (1981, p. ix). He aims to use the sociology of time perspective to inform scholars of time of pertinent sociological considerations, while enlightening sociologists about time. What he does is document richly how specific cultural settings have become the foundation for the creation of regular, repetitive boundaries for behavior. He explores schedules and calendars that organize what is done when. Zerubavel shows the regular division of time into sectors for sacred and profane activities, and for private and public activities. He devotes a book to the concept and dynamics of the week as a standard measure of time (1985). This supremely important seven-day cycle contains a combination of types of days (e.g., weekdays, weekends) that repeat continuously. The world and history are made up of days, weeks, months, and years, despite certain variations in their definition and implementation. To understand these temporal regularities and rhythms is to understand many aspects of how people spend their time. However, to understand such conceptions of time periods requires prior cultural knowledge; Zerubavel stresses that time periodicity derives more from culture than from nature (1985). From Zerubavel’s vantage point, sociology appears to contribute more to time than time to sociology

But while presenting time regularities in a more specific way than his theoretical predecessors, Zerubavel remains a theorist. In these books, he does not document how people use their time, nor does he analyze empirically differences in how sectors of the population differ in their time-use as a function of the unique contexts in which they live. He shows how greatly general time patterns reflect culture, but not how people’s actual use of time sheds theoretical and empirical light on their personal circumstances or societal conditions. We learn about time cycles, but not from how people spend their time.

Psychology joined the hunt in the mid-1980s. In a book entitled Time and Human Interaction (1986), Joseph McGrath and Janice Kelly reiterate the common feeling of their colleagues in allied disciplines:

Time is a part of the fabric of our lives. The ordinary business of human social behavior teems with temporal considerations. Time concepts and expressions permeate our language and thought. And yet, social psychology, a field that purports to study human social behavior, is relatively “timeless.” How can we as social psychologists ignore a dimension that is so central to human life? (p. 1)

McGrath and Kelly’s exploration of how time fits into social psychology suggests three ways to examine time. First, the organization of time can be a causative factor on such outcomes as behavior and feelings amidst the population. For example, the pace of activities can engender anxiety or stress if too fast. McGrath and Kelly make the important observation that time, as organized at the institutional or organizational levels, can impact selected individuals at the personal level. Second, they suggest that social psychologists might usefully view time as a dependent factor. Personal characteristics of individuals may explain the cognition, perception, and experience of time. Finally, the largely experimental methods employed by social psychologists involve aspects of time in study design, with considerations that need further development.

McGrath presents examples of pioneering work involving time in social psychology in a subsequent volume (1988). He showcases pairs of papers by various authors on each of five topics: pace of behavior; rhythm of behavior in interaction; the allocation, use, and enjoyment of time; changes over time in micro settings; and changes over time in macro settings. Some of these papers are conceptual introductions, while others report experimental or observational findings. One chapter highlights the time-use approach and its potential for psychological questions. This collection makes clear a plurality of valid paths open to psychologists who heed the possibilities of studying time. This plurality of paths increases in number and nature as the relevance of time to psychology is extended to the larger field beyond the subfield of social psychology (cf. Slife, 1993).

The decade of the 1990s found still another acknowledgment of the underdevelopment of time, regarding social science research and theory. Barbara Adam (1990) wrote:

I do not question time as a fact of life but take as problematic how social scientists understand time, and the way they incorporate it into their theories. (p.1)

Adam made a conscious decision to focus “not on studies of social time but on the way time enters social theory. In other words, we examine the way social theorists conceptualize time in both its taken-for-granted and explicated form” (p. 14). She finds that “no two theorists have the same view on what it means to make time central to social theory” (p. 14). She turns instead to the conceptualization of time as a multifactorial phenomenon:

We must be aware, however, that we can grasp time in its complexity only if we seek the relations between time, temporality, tempo and timing, between clock time, chronology, social time and time-consciousness, between motion, process, change, continuity and the temporal modalities of past, present and future, between time as resource, as ordering principle and as becoming of the possible, or between any combinations of these. (p. 13)

Adam concludes with a consciousness of the complexity time presents...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Time-Use: Strategic Value from a Ubiquitous Resource
• 2. Demystifying Time-Use Collection
• 3. Directions of Analysis and Their Implications
• 4. Studying “Hidden” Groups through Behavioral Sampling
• 5. Bridging the Gap between Qualitative and Quantitative: The Experience of Gender in Everyday Life
• 6. Patterning in Everyday Life: Episode Occurrences and Sequences
• 7. Patterns beneath the Surface: The Texture of Multitasking
• 8. Social Contact and Family Dynamics in Temporal Perspective
• 9. Behavioral Implications of Built Environments
• 10. Exposure to Risk
• Coda
• References
• Index
• About the Author