Download American Time Use Survey User's Guide

AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY USER’S GUIDE
December 2014
Step 4: Apply the appropriate formula.
The final part of the calculation is identical to example 1. Use this formula:
Average hours per day. T j , the average number of hours per day spent by a given population
engaging in activity j, is given by
 fwgt T

 fwgt
i ij
Tj
i
i
i
where Tij is the amount of time spent in activity j by respondent i, and
fwgti is the final weight for respondent i.
Follow the same steps as in example 1. The results are shown below. The variables “numerator” and
“denominator” refer to the numerator and denominator for the formula shown above. The variable
“tot_tvchild” is the final result, the numerator divided by the denominator.
Americans spent 18 minutes per day on average watching TV while their own household children
under age 18 were present in the room.
If this estimate seems low, recall that it includes all persons in the U.S. civilian population age 15 and
over, whether or not they lived in households with children.
Step 5: Verify your results (if possible)
This estimate is not available in an ATUS table (although it has been independently programmed and
verified).
page 92