Abstract
An important contribution of time use surveys is that they give a picture of how people lead their daily lives, by providing detailed information about how people spend their time on different economic and non-economic activities. The activity classification is what categorises all these different activities into groups. It is the essential building block for the information that comes out of the survey. New Zealand’s first time use survey was conducted in 1998–99. Now, 10 years on Statistics New Zealand is planning to run a second time use survey.
This paper outlines the main features of the creation of the activity classification for the next time use survey. A new classification is needed because, while the previous activity classification was structured using a relevant framework and was comparable internationally, there were issues with the structure of unpaid work activities and lack of detail at the lowest classification level for output of data. In addition, including ‘who for’ information inside the activity classification was problematic. The aim of the creation of the classification is to rectify these problems and improve the relevance of the classification to the needs of users, while keeping the classification comparable with the previous New Zealand Time Use Survey and other international time use surveys. This paper outlines the process of updating the classification while accounting for these sometimes conflicting needs.