# 4. Daily time allocation across the smartphone, 24-hour recall and 7-day recall approaches

## 4.1 Time allocation and treatment effects across smartphone and 24-hour recall arms

As shown in Figure 1, the recall treatment was administered at three times during the weeklong survey period for each respondent — day 6 (with the recall diary corresponding to the prior 24 hours, i.e., day 5); day 9 (corresponding to time spent during day 8); and day 11 (corresponding to time spent during day 10). As the smartphone data were collected continually, the analysis in this section presents comparisons of daily time allocation in the smartphone arm matched by day with the recall arm, to account for any potential factors affecting day-to-day changes in time allocation. The results for the aggregated activity categories are presented across (1) agriculture; (2) nonfarm employment; (3) unpaid domestic and care work (obtaining services/resources for the household; cooking and cleaning; and care of children or elderly); (4) transport; (5) schooling/studying; (6) leisure; (7) community activities; (8) personal care (bathing, dressing, care for one’s own health issues); (9) sleep; and (10) eating/drinking. The descriptive statistics on the disaggregated activities underlying these categories are presented in the Appendix Tables A3 and A4.

Taking the day 5 comparison as an example,<sup>15</sup> Table 3 shows that the smartphone arm reports significantly higher participation across several activity categories in agriculture, non-agriculture (women), unpaid domestic and care work for the household, schooling/studying, and community activities. This included higher unpaid care work among women in the smartphone arm, but also greater participation in different areas of unpaid work among men. The recall arm, on the other hand, yielded significantly higher participation rates in self-care, such as leisure, personal care, sleeping and eating. We turn to potential reasons for these differences in Section 5, including greater reporting across a range of activities conducted throughout the day in the smartphone arm, as well as <mark>multitasked activities. T</mark> able 4 also shows that greater participation in employed and unpaid work among men and women in the smartphone arm leads to narrower, albeit still substantial, gender gaps for participation in most of these activities, with a slightly greater gap for care work — 41 percent, compared to 37 percent in the recall arm.

On unconditional time, however, owing likely to the structure of the 24-hour recall module where time devoted to a given activity was recorded for a minimum of 15 minutes, and the fact that smartphone arm respondents recorded large shares of activities for less than 15 minutes (Table 5), the reported daily time in minutes is higher across activity categories in the recall arm, except for transportation. Along with lower participation among men in employed and unpaid work in the recall arm, this leads to higher time-related gender gaps for these activities (Table 4). Kernel density estimates in Figure 4, based on the pooled matched sample of days 5, 8, and 10, also show much greater increases in unconditional time in the recall sample for areas such as leisure, and more so for men. Only unconditional time in transport and some areas of men’s unpaid work remain higher in the smartphone arm, indicating that these activities are even further underestimated in the recall arm, given the minimum 15-minute floor for activities in the 24-hour diary.

> 15 Appendix Figure A3 shows that there is very little variation when averaging time in activity categories across days 5, 8, and 10, for both men and women.

13