RAPID: COVID-19 Influences on Racial, Gender, and Social Class Disparities in Time Use and Well-Being

Time is major resource for all people in the United States. People allocate time to work, family activities and leisure in different amounts. For many years, social scientists have tracked time use to determine how social groups vary in time use, and analyze how time use has changed historically. We know anecdotally that the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed how people allocate time, especially given school closures and sharp increases in working from home, with less commuting to work. This project will support an urgent nationally representative time diary survey with a subjective well-being component to assess both objective time use and subjective reactions to current conditions. The project will collect time use data between August and December 2020 to understand how racial, gender, geographic location and social class variation in current time use contribute to the different ways that COVID-19 is affecting Americans. The data collection will facilitate the creation of knowledge on how individual and structural inequities relating to these statuses influence daily behaviors that increase risk of exposure, infection, and dying from COVID-19. These data will inform social policy at several levels regarding pandemic experiences and subjective responses, thus supporting the health and well-being of people in the United States.

Time use has changed dramatically owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we understand little beyond anecdotes and a few aggregate figures. This project will collect time diary and well-being data during the COVID-19 pandemic from a representative sample of the U.S. adult population aged 18 and older. Time diary data are the gold standard for collecting unbiased, valid, and reliable data about daily routines and the ways time is allocated to the many activities of daily life, and will include sampling of respondent activities throughout the day. The time diary will be accompanied by assessments of positive and negative dimensions of subjective well-being assessed for each activity reported. The momentary assessments of well-being allow researchers to analyze the well-being consequences of time use decisions, which are fundamental to health, quality of life, and effective functioning of a society. The project will collect 6,250 time diaries between August and December 2020, thus ensuring an adequate number of cases for sub-group analyses. All data will be collected by Gallup and the sample will be drawn from the nationally representative Gallup Panel. The data collection will include oversamples of persons of color; sampling weights will ensure the final dataset is nationally representative. In combination with similar, previously collected time-use data, these new data will show how time use has changed owing to the pandemic, and will enable analyses of social differences in time use during the second half of 2020. The project will use data analytic techniques including multivariate regression models using OLS, fixed effects, and random effects. These data will form an important foundation for analysis of time series, time use data, thus informing sociological theories regarding work and family, with implications for the economy, for family functioning, for education, and inter-generational relationships.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.