The research project
Attitude research on the innovative recording of housework in households with children
Time use studies are usually based on survey-based time diaries.
They have shown that a) there are large differences between men and women living together as heterosexual couples with children in terms of participation in household tasks (Schulz 2021), and b) there may be gender-specific over- or under-reporting of household activities (Bonke 2005). In the future, technological advances will enable the use of devices that automatically record (inter)actions (wearables) to obtain more valid information about the division of tasks, daily routines and interaction between household members. Wearables are also a potential next step in advancing family research to better understand the challenges of mobile work. However, unlike in health research, little is known about the acceptance of the use of such technologies for research on family life behavior. The project is therefore investigating the acceptance of wearables for research purposes in households with children through focus groups and surveys. The placement of measuring devices is being tested in a model apartment.
We see wearables as a complementary tool to traditional research methods such as diary studies or time-use studies. Research topics such as the domestic division of labor or research involving children are all very sensitive topics and we know that we have to take certain effects into account, for example:
Social desirability and the associated systematic over/under-reporting. For example, gender-specific over- or under-reporting of time spent on domestic work or care work, and recall bias can also strongly influence the results.
Considering these methodological challenges, there are some potential benefits of wearables, they could enable more objective measurement of data with a higher temporal resolution. By using wearables, we could include all household members in the data collection and take dyadic perspectives into account. Depending on the technology, it could be less invasive in comparison to the existing daily routine.
We think that wearables could be useful for different areas of family research and especially for the distribution of unpaid work in households.