General Social Survey, Cycle 12, 1998 [Canada]: Time Use, Episode File

The two primary objectives of Cycle 12 are: to gather data on social trends in order to monitor temporal changes in the living conditions and well-being of Canadians; and to provide immediate information on specific social policy issues of current or emerging interest. The GSS is a continuing program with a single survey cycle each year. However, there was no GSS undertaken for the 1997 reference year due to budgetary priorities at that time. The core content of time use repeats that of Cycle 7 (1992) and Cycle 2(1986), and provides data on the daily activities of Canadians. Question modules were also included on unpaid work activities, cultural activities and participation in sports.The episode file provides the detailed information on each activity episode reported by respondents. For each episode there is information on the start and end time of the activity, the duration of episode (derived from start and end time), the location of the episode, a set of variables that reflect who the respondent was with during the episode, and information on who an activity helped. Since there could be multiple contacts for an episode, the contact data is provided in the form of a set of variables, one for each type of contact. The unit record for this file is the episode and not the respondent. Each record represents a single activity in a respondents day, and all respondents episodes 4 must add up to twenty four hours (1440 minutes). For example, a respondent who has reported 26 different episodes for his/her reference day has generated 26 records on the Episode file. There is no information on the characteristics of the respondent. However each episode can be linked to the respondent using the RECID and characteristics can be obtained from the Main File. In addition, each episode includes information on the diary day and the total number of episodes for a respondent.