Women's and Children's Activity Profiles: a Comparison of time Allocation and time Allocation Methods
Messer, E.; Bloch, M.
Journal of Comparative Family Studies 16(3): 329-343
1985
ISSN/ISBN: 0047-2328 Document Number: 530835
Cross-culturally, there is a growing interest in the effect of women's participation in the wage economy on the quantity and quality of maternal interaction with children and children's development. Essential to all of the questions concerning the effect of women's work on their interaction with children is a methodology for studying how women in different cultures use time. This paper draws on two independent field studies, one done in Senegal and one done in Mexico, that measured women's and children's time use. It compares the research questions, results, and interpretations that can be made from time allocation data collected by two methods; randomized spot observations versus daylong narratives. The results of these analyses suggest spot observations can give reliable, but "thin" descriptions of how time is used in a given culture and that more detail, provided by narrative records of varying length as well as other cultural data, are essential to achieve "thicker" cultural descriptions. Neither the spot observation nor the day-long observation method were sufficient by themselves to answer the questions posed.