2013 - 2016
About the project
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is generally considered as a very rich and reliable data source to capture labour force characteristics and working times. However, when it comes to the length, timing and scheduling of working times, there is an internationally growing concern about the validity and reliability of working time estimates of the LFS. These concerns rise partially because of its methodology of stylised estimate questions which are prone to memory decay and overestimations of work time durations, and partially because of flexibility, sovereignty, and weekly patterning of working times, which are important characteristics of the current labour market and by no means captured by simple estimates of weekly work time durations as done in the LFS. When it comes to measuring working times, the methodologies of time-diaries as used in Time-Use Surveys (TUS) and Work Grids (WG) can account for the weaknesses attributed to work time estimates of the LFS. Since respondents in TUS face a much shorter period of recall because of instantaneous registration of activities, report their activities in their natural temporal order, and need to confine to the maximum overall duration of 24 hours a day, memory decay and overestimations are largely ruled out. The strength of the WG is that respondents keep track of just one activity in a delineated grid for one whole week, compared to the two-day diaries of TUS.
