ATUS components of AHTUS vars; TUS weights

TIME USE
1

Hello, I am trying to look at childcare time use for ATUS 2021; I have been using AHTUS up to the harmonized 2018 data and was hoping to extend to 2021 with ATUS.

There is then a question of (1) weights and (2) how the ATHUS measures of childcare are created; I have been looking into these by comparing AHTUS 2018 and ATUS 2018.

I have attempted to create a measure of childcare for ATUS that matches the AHTUS variable I am interested in. The best combination of BLS time codes I have found for ATUS makes most of the sample match up on childcare time with the AHTUS variable I am using (48 of 9593 do not match).

So, regarding (2): So that I can create the same measure for (I think primary) childcare activities for ATUS 2021 as is used for AHTUS-harmonized ATUS data, is there a list of the BLS time codes that are used to create the AHTUS aggregated variables? E.g., which. tu-codes go into 0533 “Care of infants”?

I see in the harmonization file the following correction for “child” :
replace child=1 if child==0 & (trcode==30101 | trcode==30102 | trcode==30103 | ///
trcode==30104 | trcode==30105 | trcode==30106 | trcode==30107 | trcode==30109 | ///
trcode==30112 | trcode==30199 | trcode==30201 | trcode==30203 | trcode==30299 | ///
trcode==30301 | trcode==30302 | trcode==30399 | trcode==40101 | trcode==40102 | ///
trcode==40103 | trcode==40104 | trcode==40105 | trcode==40106 | trcode==40107 | ///
trcode==40109 | trcode==40112 | trcode==40199 | trcode==40201 | trcode==40203 | ///
trcode==40299 | trcode==40301 | trcode==40302 | trcode==40399)
tab child

These are some of the relevant tu codes that I use to construct the ATUS measure, but I can’t identify where each of the subcategories of childcare (care of infants (0533), general care of older children (0534), etc.) are created.

Regarding (1): If I retain only the observations where my AHTUS 2018 childcare measure exactly matches my ATUS 2018 childcare measure and take the weighted mean of childcare time for males and females each, the numbers differ by quite a bit. This is of course using recwght for AHTUS and wt06 for ATUS. It seems clear that using wt06 for ATUS 2021 and using recwght-weighted AHTUS data for previous years will be problematic.

Can MTUS weights be used here? I ask this becuase the MTUS measures are not granular enough. Is there some way to use ATHUS time with MTUS weights? It appears that all three of recwght, wt06 and propwt differ. I guess they are designed to balance for different things in each case? Weighting my ATUS childcare measure with MTUS weights produces a similar result (I mean, wt06 and propwt produce similar values). While MTUS does provide weights for the full sample I am interested in, I am not sure if this is an inappropriate exercise because there are very different modifications are made to create propwt / they should only be used for cross-country purposes or something…

I apologize if any of the above is unclear! Please let me know if I can explain more or differently.
Thank you!

2

You can find the documentation that describes each activity code (MAIN) in IPUMS AHTUS in the variable description tab by clicking on “additional documentation”. The childcare codes begin on page 31 and describe the types of activities included in each code across samples. For example, the documentation notes that medical care of children (MAIN = 35) includes the ATUS/BLS activities (ACTIVITY): providing medical care to household children (30301), obtaining medical care for household children (30302), as well as waiting associated with household children’s health (30303). You should be able to map these accordingly. One challenge is that coding “care of infants” and “general care of older children” requires combining the activity codes with the ages of children present during the activity (i.e., the same activity code in the ATUS will be coded differently in the AHTUS depending on if the activity was done with a child under 5 years old or with a child 5-17 years old). The documentation notes that both categories comprise of physical care for household children (ACTIVITY = 30101), organization and planning for household children (30108), looking after household children (30109), using paid childcare services (80101), and waiting associated with purchasing childcare services (80102). You can attach WHO records to your ATUS extract that provide information on who the respondent participated in a given activity with, using the variables RELATEW and AGEW.

Regarding weights, RECWGHT is the recommended weight to use for all of your analyses of AHTUS data for all sample years. However, you may choose to use ORIGWGHT (i.e., WT06 in AHTUS from 2003-onwards) instead. MTUS weights should be used only for analyses of MTUS data. RECWGHT recalibrates ATUS weights by assigning a weight of 0 to participants with low quality time diaries (LOWQUAL = 1). These are participants who recorded fewer than 7 activities, had more than 90 minutes missing from their time diary, or had time recorded in one or fewer of four basic activities (sleep or rest, eat or drink, personal care, and travel or exercise).

Some researchers may use RECWGHT to exclude these low quality diaries if they suspect that these diaries were inaccurately recorded and missing important details. For example, these diaries might be biased towards missing or underestimating time spent on caring for children. Note that since RECWGHT is recalibrated to represent the demographics of the US population after these diaries are excluded, simply dropping low quality diaries will not result in RECWGHT equaling ORIGWGHT. Alternatively, researchers might believe that low quality diaries are accurate (at least for their analyses), in which case they may use ORIGWGHT. In determining which weight to use, it may be worth examining the low quality cases further to determine the specific reason for exclusion, the types of activities the participant reported, and whether the participant resided in a household with a child.