Description

LOWQUAL reports whether the diary is low quality.

A high-quality diary has the following characteristics:

• The diary has 90 minutes or less missing main activity time after imputation (that is they have accounted for majority of the day);

• The diary has 7 or more episodes;

• The diary includes some time recorded in at least 2 of 4 basic activities as a primary or secondary activity (or in the case of travel, marked through location of means of transport) in which one would expect a diarists to have engaged on any given day. The four main activities include sleep or rest, eat or drink, personal care, and travel or exercise. We did note that some people providing child care to multiple children or to an infant as well as some diarists performing adult care did not record travel. If a respondent reported primary or secondary child or adult care that activity was allowed to substitute for one of the basic activities, under the assumption that the respondent was likely to have engaged in one or more of them while in the course of caring for others.

Comparability

In US ATUS samples (2003-forward), if a respondent reported being in the same location for the entire day (i.e. at home) and was missing a travel activity, non-ATUS samples are counted as the travel activity if the diary had 12 or more episodes. To retain more diaries in ATUS samples, IPUMS removed the episode count threshold and allowed any diary that met the 7 episode criterion to use this substitution.

Universe

Availability

• 1930, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2003-2024

Flags