Irish Social Science Data Archive
If you have any queries on the Irish National Time Use Survey Anonymised Microdata File (AMF) please read through these frequently asked questions (FAQs) which cover the most common queries received. If your query is not answered here, please contact us on issda@ucd.ie.
Q. It seems that there are some diaries with more than one activity recorded during the same time slot. So I am wondering if survey data with only one main activity in each time slot would be available. Or the first activity mentioned in the dataset already means the main activity?
A. Respondents in the time use survey were encouraged to indicate their main activity for each time slot but were allowed to tick two activities (some ticked more). This can then be analysed in a number of ways (so that the time is not double counted). Either the time slot can be split evenly between the activities or some rules may be applied as to which of the activities takes precedence.
We took the latter option in our main time use report; the implications of applying an alternative weighting were also examined in the appendix. Links to the Reports and Time Use Diary are available from the ISSDA page: http://www.ucd.ie/issda/data/irishnationaltimeusesurvey/
Q. "I am interested in the variable 'region3' whose values ranges from 1 to 3. I have spent some time in looking for information about the variable on your descriptive pdf-files without successes.
I know (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Ireland) there are three provinces in Ireland: Leinster, Munster and Connacht.
So I assume the variable 'region3' is linked to the provinces. Am I right?
If so, could you kindly quote a correspondence from the number coded in the variable 'region3' and the province it refers to."
A. The region3 variable codes are:
1.00 Dublin
2.00 Border Midlands West
3.00 South and East (excluding Dublin).
This is a collapsed version of the NUTS3 classification of regions for Ireland which is used by Eurostat and the CSO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUTS_3_statistical_regions_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland