DOI: 10.3886/icpsr04247
title: National Survey of Parents, 1999-2001
title: Archival Version

description: The National Survey of Parents, 1999-2001 was designed to
collect data on the activity patterns of American parents and on how
they divide their time among work, household tasks, child care, and
leisure activities. Information on feelings about various parenting
activities was also ascertained.
Using established time-diary procedures with Computer Assisted
Telephone Interviewing (CATI), respondents were asked to complete
"yesterday" time diaries. These diaries detailed respondents' primary
activities from midnight to midnight of the previous day, their
secondary activities (e.g., activities that occurred simultaneously
with the primary activities), and when, with whom, and where they
engaged in the activities. In addition to estimates of time use, the
project elicited information on (1) age, race/ethnicity, family
income, marital status, education, and employment status of the
respondent and spouse (if married), (2) weekly estimates of time spent
in different activities with children, (3) feelings of time pressure,
and (4) enjoyment of certain parenting activities.
There are two different data files available. Part 1, Main Data,
contains 1,200 respondent records that include respondent and
household characteristics, questions about feelings and time pressure,
and survey weights. This file also contains aggregated measures of
minutes per day in 99 detailed primary time activities, time spent in
13 locations, and time spent with different categories of people. The
Main Data Codebook documents the variables contained in Part 1.
Part 2, Time Diary Data, contains 24,814 activity records collected in
the time diary. Each primary activity record also contains information
on any simultaneous secondary activity, the location code for where
the primary activity took place, and the "with whom" code for each
primary activity. The Time Diary Codebook and Time Diary Questionnaire
document the variables contained in the Part 2.
Users who wish to link the two files should use the variable
<strong>pid</strong> contained in both data files.
description: The National Survey of Parents, 1999-2001 data include
two analysis weights. The first weight (WEIGHT) is included in the
main data file and is needed to account for households with more than
one nonbusiness telephone number. The weight was calculated as the
reciprocal of the respondent's to a question about the number of
nonbusiness telephone lines in a household, and it served as the
correction for multiple nonbusiness telephones in a household. This
weight should be used for all analysis involving the telephone data
and for the construction of any post stratification weights.
The second weight (FINALWT) is a combined variable that adjusts for
survey design, post-stratification, and the day of the week that the
interview occurred. This weight was normed so that it sums to the
number of completed interviews. Post-stratification adjustments were
made to correct discrepancies between the sample distribution on sex,
age, education, race/ethnicity, and census region, as well as 2000
Current Population Survey distributions. The day of the week
adjustment corrects for the unequal number of interviews collected on
each of the seven days of week and was calculated using a ratio of
14.3 percent (i.e., one-seventh) to the actual percentage of the
interviews completed on that day of week.
description: Response Rates: The estimated response rate is 63.5 percent.
description: The sample was selected from a One Plus list-assisted
Random Digit Dial (RDD) frame and was designed to yield approximately
1,200 interviews from the 48 states plus the District of Columbia with
approximately equal numbers of completed interviews done for each day
of the week.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Main Data
DS2: Time Diary Data
description: Parents age 18 or older who were living with at least one
of their children under age 18 and residing in a household with a
telephone in the contiguous United States.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The original coding of the time diaries and the final
dataset preparation did not include respondent age. An attempt to
recontact households and get respondent ages was made in late March
and early April 2001. The missing information was obtained for 803
households. Age was imputed for the remainder of the sample from other information (e.g., age of spouse). Details are provided in the
discussion of constructed variables and imputation flags.