Hi,
Thanks for providing such a fantastic data platform. I was using the “date” variable and was curious if this date is the interview date or the diary date. The label says “Date of ATUS interview” but the “description” says “DATE reports the calendar date of the diary day. Date format is YYYYMMDD.” which seems conflicting.
To be more specific, suppose a respondent started time diary on Jan 1, 4 am and finished it on Jan 2, 4 am. Then the “date” variable corresponds to Jan 2 or Jan 1? Thank you!
The IPUMS ATUS variable DATE represents the original ATUS source variable TUDIARYDATE. According to the ATUS User Guide, “researchers can use the variable TUDIARYDATE to identify the date about which respondents reported their use of time.” Therefore, DATE represents the date of activities reported by the respondent, not the actual date of interview and data collection. The ATUS interview is conducted by asking respondents nearly all questions in relation to “yesterday”, so it can be reasonably interpreted that the actual interview likely occurred 1 day later than the date reported in the variable DATE. I agree that our variable documentation is confusing on whether DATE represents the diary date or interview date, and I have made an update to the variable label for DATE which will go out with our next release (today!).
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