DOI: 10.3886/icpsr36268.v8
title: American Time Use Survey (ATUS): Arts Activities, [United States], 2003-2023
title: Version 8

description: The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is the Nation's first federally administered, continuous survey on time use in the United States. This multi-year data collection contains information on the amount of time (in minutes) that people spent doing various activities on a given day, including the arts activities, in the years 2003 through 2023.
Data collection for the ATUS began in January 2003. Sample cases for the survey are selected monthly, and interviews are conducted continuously throughout the year. In 2023, approximately 9,000 individuals were interviewed. Estimates are released annually. ATUS sample households are chosen from the households that completed their eighth (final) interview for the Current Population Survey (CPS), the nation's monthly household labor force survey. ATUS sample households are selected to ensure that estimates will be nationally representative. One individual age 15 or over is randomly chosen from each sampled household. This "designated person" is interviewed by telephone once about his or her activities on the day before the interview--the "diary day."
The ATUS Activity Coding Lexicon is a 3-tiered classification system with 17 first-tier categories. Each of the first-tier categories has two additional levels of detail. Respondents' reported activities are assigned 6-digit activity codes based on this classification system.
Additionally, the study provides demographic information--including sex, age, ethnicity, race, education, employment, and children in the household.

IMPORTANT: The 2020 ATUS was greatly affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Data collection was suspended in 2020 from mid-March to mid-May. ATUS data files for 2020 contain all ATUS data collected in 2020--both before and after data collection was suspended. For more information, please visit BLS's ATUS page.
The weighting method was changed for 2020 to account for the suspension of data collection in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents from 2020 will have missing values for the replicate weights on this data file. The Pandemic Replicate weights file for 2019-20 contains 160 replicate final weights for each ATUS final weight created using the 2020 weighting method. Chapter 7 of the ATUS User's Guide provides more information about the 2020 weighting method.
description: The primary purpose of this data collection is to develop nationally representative estimates (in minutes) of how people spend their time on any given day.
description: Between the years 2003-2023 245,139 respondents completed the ATUS survey. The survey results are based on computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) with a representative sample of residents living in households in the United States that are at least 15 years of age, with the exception of active military personnel and people residing in institutions such as nursing homes and prisons.
For additional details on the study design please refer to chapter 3 within the User Guide sub-section portion of the larger ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide document.
description: Variables for this data collection provide information about the amount of time (in minutes) people spend doing various activities for any given 24-hour period. The period in question is from 4:00 am the day preceding the interview up through 4:00 am the day of the interview. Activities are classified into 18 Tier 1 categories which include:

Personal care
Household activities
Caring for and helping household members
Caring for and helping non-household members
Work and work related activites
Education
Consumer purchases
Professional and personal care services
Household services
Government services and civic obligations
Eating and drinking
Socializing, relaxing, and leisure
Sports, exercise, and recreation
Religious and spiritual activities
Volunteer activities
Telephone calls
Traveling
Unable to classify

There are a total of 424 unique activity codes in Dataset 1 and listed in the ATUS Activity Lexicon 2003-2023 portion of the User Guide document. Dataset 1 also contains additional demographic variables such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, education, employment, and children in the household. Additionally, there are variables that designate what day of the week the interview took place on and whether or not that day was a holiday.
description: The data contain the weight variables TUFNWGTP and TU20FWGT. TUFNWGTP was created using the 2006 weighting method and is available for all years. Users need to apply weights when computing estimates with the ATUS data because simple tabulations of unweighted ATUS data produce misleading results. The weighting variable in 2020 is called TU20FWGT. For information about TU20FWGT and the other weighting variables, see Chapter 7 of the ATUS User's Guide.
The ATUS final weight(s) add up to the total number of person-days (not persons) in the population. Thus the sum of the weights for an annual file would add up to 365 days times the United States (civilian non-institutional) population aged 15 and older.
This study also contains a separate Replicate Weights File which contains the replicate weights for variable TUFNWGTP. These weights were created using the 2006 weighting method. The data file contains one record for each respondent to the ATUS. These replicate weights are necessary for constructing standard error estimates. To use these weights, merge the Replicate Weights File to the Activity Summary File using the ID variable TUCASEID.

For additional information on weighting please refer to chapter 7 within the User Guide sub-section portion of the larger ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide document.
description: Response Rates: The response rate for each year from 2003 through 2023 are as follows:

2003: 57.8 percent
2004: 57.3 percent
2005: 56.6 percent
2006: 55.1 percent
2007: 52.5 percent
2008: 54.6 percent
2009: 56.6 percent
2010: 56.9 percent
2011: 54.6 percent
2012: 53.2 percent
2013: 49.9 percent
2014: 51.0 percent
2015: 48.5 percent
2016: 46.8 percent
2017: 45.6 percent
2018: 43.3 percent
2019: 42.0 percent
2020: 39.2 percent
2021: 39.4 percent
2022: 35.8 percent
2023: 36.9 percent

In 2020, data collection and response rates for the ATUS were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Response to the ATUS was directly impacted by the suspension of ATUS data collection and mail-out
operations in mid-March until mid-May 2020. See Section 9.2.1 for more detailed information about the
effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ATUS.
For additional information on how response rates were calculated please refer to section 3.6 within the User Guide sub-section portion of the larger ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide document.
description: The sample for this data collection was drawn from households that had completed their final month of interviews for the Current Population Survey (CPS). The ATUS utilizes a stratified three-stage sampling approach. The first stage is at the state level so that the sample is in the same proportion as to the proportion of the population of that state compared to the population of the country. The second stage of the sample is selection at the household level stratified by key demographics. The third stage is selection of the respondent within the household.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Activity Summary Data
DS2: Replicate Weights Data
DS3: Pandemic Replicate Weights Data
description: All residents living in households in the United States that are at least 15 years of age, with the exception of active military personnel and people residing in institutions such as nursing homes and prisons.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The survey is sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau who collects and processes the data.NADAC also includes unpublished ATUS summary tables produced by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. These tables provide data for years 2010-2014 and for years 2011-2015. The tables show numbers of Americans participating on any given day and average time spent on an activity. The 2010-2014 summary tables contain both national and state level data. The 2011-2015 tables contain national data only.Users can find statistics for arts-related activities in the Tier 1 categories "Socializing, Relaxing and Leisure" and "Sports, Exercise, and Recreation."
Before analyzing the data, users are strongly encouraged to refer to the ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide (produced by the Census Bureau), which contains detailed explanations regarding study design, sampling frame used, data coding and editing, weights, and response rates.Although some demographic variables are updated during the ATUS interview, most of this information comes from earlier CPS interviews, as the ATUS sample is drawn from a subset of households that have completed month 8 of the CPS.The activity code variables for this data collection are preceded by the letter "T" and include a six-digit activity classification code. Activity classification codes and examples can be found in the 2003-2023 ATUS Activity Lexicon section in the ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide. The first two digits represent the Tier 1 category, the middle two digits represent the Tier 2 category, and the final two digits represent the unique, specific activity within those categories.While attempts have been made to collect the most accurate data possible, the ATUS data do have limitations. With the exception of childcare, information on secondary activities (activities that are done at the same time as the primary activity) is not collected. This could lead to underestimates of the amount of time people spend doing activities that are frequently done in combination with other activities. For example, ATUS estimates likely underestimate the amount of time people spend listening to music since so many people listen to music while doing other things.Survey estimates are subject to non-sampling errors that may arise from many different sources, such as an inability to obtain information from all individuals in the sample, data entry errors, coding errors, and misinterpretation of definitions. Errors also could occur if non-response is correlated with time use. Non-sampling errors were not measured. However, the Census Bureau uses quality-assurance procedures to minimize non-sampling, data entry, and coding errors in the survey estimates. Please refer to Chapters 7 and 10 of the ATUS 2003-2023 User Guide for further details.Please see the Bureau of Labor Statistic's website for more information regarding the American Time Use Survey.Some study-level documentation files feature older study time frames; ICPSR will continue to make older documentation files available if newer versions have not been supplied.