ATUS-eldercare?

TIME USE
1

Hi,

I am having a hard time figuring out the ‘technical eldercare’ variables–who do they refer to?

I know it says ‘eldercare recipients’, but is it eldercare recipients from ‘yesterday’ or from the past several months, or is it from the secondary eldercare variables?

Basically, I’m trying to figure out if I could look at the technical eldercare variables in order to determine who respondents were caring for, among those who said they provided ‘adult care’ yesterday (activity codes in the 030000 and 040000 range).

(I know now all adultcare recipients would be eldercare recipients, but i’m assuming a fair share would be.)

If i can’t do that with the eldercare vars, is there any other way to do it? (right now, i’m looking at the adult care with whom variables also–if the respondent was providing adult care and was with only one person, i’m assuming that is the care recipient–but there are lots of records where respondent is with more than one person).

thank in advance as always for your help!

2

The technical eldercare variables provide information about people for whom the ATUS respondent provided care. If the respondent indicated that he/she had provided eldercare more than once, during the past 3 to 4 months, additional information about each eldercare recipient is collected. Some additional information is in this documentation.

Since the survey time period is a specific 24 hour period, but the technical eldercare variables relate to eldercare in the past 3 to 4 months, you may not necessarily be able to align eldercare yesterday with a specific eldercare recipient.

As you note, you could explore adult care activities using the with whom variables, but that will likely not be perfect either.

You may just want to explore each option and see if you are able to work with the data that is available.