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Existing research on digital inclusion has shown that older adults (65+) are, in general, less digitally skilled than other age groups. While older adults can gain digital skills through 'cold' (formal) training by ICT instructors or through 'warm' (informal) support from family and friends, studies have suggested that formal training is more effective. Drawing on qualitative interview data of 26 ICT instructors, we 1) examine how their support contributes to the acquisition of digital skills in later life, and 2) explore the ICT instructors' role in the digital inclusion of older adults. The instructors in our study identify specific strategies to address the mental and ageing-related barriers faced by older adults in acquiring digital skills. The 'warm' support provided by family and friends is a double-edged reason behind the need for 'cold' training. On the one hand, they gift devices, encourage uptake, and shape learning desires. On the other hand, participants turn to ICT training due to the limitations of informal support in terms of time, patience, and expertise. Drawing on the instructors' descriptions and existing literature, we argue that ICT instructors play a necessary role in the digital inclusion of older adults as they close the 'instruction gap' left by warm experts.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the division of household labour could continue to lock down or start to break gender roles. Using time-use data of n = 473 individuals collected during the lockdown restrictions in Belgium from March to May 2020, we analyse the gendered division of routine and non-routine household labour in absolute time use and relative shares. We compare against the Belgian time-use data of 2013 for the same time period ( n = 678 individuals). A time-demanding work and living situation associate with an increase in men’s time spent on household labour during the lockdown but not with a change in women’s time use. The gender gap closes in absolute time but not in relative shares of routine and non-routine household labour. The limited impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender division of household labour indicates a temporal rather than a substantial change in gender roles.

Previous research has shown that a prolonged recall period is associated with lower data quality in time-diary research. In these studies, the recall period is roughly estimated on the basis of the period between the assigned diary day and the agreed collection day. Because this is so rudimentary, little is known about the duration of the mean recall period and its consequences for data quality. Recent advances in online methodology now allow a better investigation of the recall period using time stamps. Using a refined indicator, the authors examine the duration of the recall period, to what extent this duration is related to socioeconomic characteristics, and how a prolonged recall period affects data quality. The authors demonstrate that using online time-diary data collected from 8,535 teachers in Belgium, the mean recall period is less than 24 hr for most respondents, although respondents with many time constraints have extended recall periods. Additionally, a prolonged recall period indeed has negative consequences for data quality. Quality deterioration already arises several hours after an activity has been completed, much sooner than previous research has indicated.

Due to the diversification and fragmentation of working time arrangements, the organisation of working weeks now differ substantially from each other. To account for week-to-week variability in working time estimates in time diary research, it is important that respondents keep their time diaries on designated registration days. At the same time, this week-to-week variability might lead respondents to postpone their participation to convenient registration days. Research shows that, due to diverse time cycles, postponing participation leads to substantial bias. However, these findings pre-date online time diary methodologies. In online time diary studies, algorithms assign registration days and, therefore, postponement is solely done at the convenience of the respondent and no longer relies on the availability of the interviewer. Analyses of online time diary data from Flemish (Belgian) teachers (ndiary days = 59,969; nteachers = 8567) reveal that postponement depends on (the day in) the time cycle. This postponement is partially selective and thus leads to biased working time estimates. Some oversampling strategies are suggested to account for this possible bias, but a designated, consecutive 7-day time diary approach with postponement remains the recommended standard for collecting reliable working time estimates.

Studies that analyse people's perceptions of their living environment as an explanatory factor for residential mobility are scarce at best. The study presented in this article addresses this deficit by investigating how people's perceptions of cities as living environments influence their relocation behaviour within metropolitan areas. After gathering information on relocation behaviour from 1,056 survey respondents in the Brussels Capital Region, we analysed the data using our self-developed ‘resonance analysis’ methodology. Our findings indicate that the variability of residential mobility is greatly influenced by people's perceptions of the city. They also demonstrate the ways in which qualitative data on people's perceptions and subjective experiences can be combined with quantitative data to improve statistical predictions of relocation behaviour.

Several researchers have applied Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to studies regarding the experience of space and architecture, concluding that respondents often experience surroundings very differen...

Comparing the results of two large-scale user surveys conducted in Flanders in 2004 and 2018 shows that the Flemish public library sector has successfully adapted to challenging circumstances, such as increasing budgetary stringency and the pervasive digitalization of society. However, it is also clear that attendance numbers have decreased in Flemish public libraries in the last two decades, especially among visitors with lower education levels, which is cause for concern. In this article, the authors present an overview of exploratory analyses that try to ascertain how many of the public libraries that took part in their study were considered to be significantly more (or less) ‘inviting’ by specific subgroups (age, gender, education level, etc.) of the visiting public. Moreover, regression analyses are presented, showing which library characteristics have a positive effect on the attendance of two under-represented groups among Flemish library users: men and the lower educated.

Like other surveys, time use surveys are facing declining response rates. At the same time paper-and-pencil surveys are increasingly replaced by online surveys. Both the declining response rates and the shift to online research are expected to have an impact on the representativeness of survey data questioning whether they are still the most suitable instrument to obtain a reliable view on the organization of daily life. This contribution examines the representativeness of a self-administered online time use survey using Belgian data collected in 2013 and 2014. The design of the study was deliberately chosen to test the automated processes that replace interviewer support and its cost-efficiency. We use weighting coefficients, a life table and discrete-time survival analyses to better understand the timing and selectivity of dropout, with a focus on the effects of individual time use patterns and the survey design. The results show that there are three major hurdles that cause large groups of respondents to drop out. This dropout is selective, and this selectivity differs according to the dropout moment. The contribution aims to provide a better insight in dropout during the fieldwork and tries to contribute to the further improvement of survey methodology of online time use surveys.

Research on leisure and time poverty has mainly focused on the duration of time and on the profile of the time poor. Using the 2013 Flemish Time-Use Data, this article investigates the influence of multiple dimensions of time wealth on leisure activities and leisure patterns for the working population. The four temporal dimensions used are leisure duration, leisure during the weekend, fragmentation of leisure, and subjective feeling of time pressure. Additionally, the article investigates if these dimensions affect working women and men differently. Findings indicate a significant association of the duration of leisure with many other leisure variables. However, other dimensions such as fragmentation of leisure seem to also play a significant role in shaping leisure patterns. Differentiating between working women and men especially made us reflect on the different effect of fragmentation for the leisure of men and women.

Active participation of the elderly is a recognized response to address the societal and individual challenges of rising life expectancy such as releasing the pressure of age-related public spending, reducing social isolation and improving well-being. How much time older people devote to active participation and whether their time allocation is associated with well-being remains under-investigated. Using time-use data from Belgium (n = 1384) and the USA (n = 2133), we investigate the time older people (65–80 years) spent on active participation and examine how this relates to their life satisfaction as an indicator of well-being. The countries vary in the amount of time spent on paid employment and volunteering, but not on informal help. Belgian older people spend much less time on paid employment than their American counterparts. This implies more are available to volunteer and provide informal help. Yet participation rates in these activities are higher in the USA. Multivariate analyses show that associations between active participation and life satisfaction vary between both countries and within both countries by gender and age. Overall, positive associations between paid work and volunteering and life satisfaction suggest that governments would do well to mobilize elderly into active participation, especially in Belgium. Negative associations between informal help and life satisfaction suggest governments should provide greater support for informal carers.

In 2019, Femma Wereldvrouwen, a Belgian women’s organization experimented with a 30-hour workweek on organizational level. All full-time employees reduced their weekly working hours from 36, 34, or 32 (depending on their age) to 30. The experiment lasted one calendar year. By integrating a sociological temporal lens and considering the different levels in the organization, this study investigates how the organization has adapted their work to a shorter workweek based on 20 in-depth interviews and 4 focus-group interviews with employees. We find that Femma Wereldvrouwen combined structural changes on organizational and team level in a formalized way, with room for individual employees to find their own new temporal strategies in a shorter workweek. These strategies relate to focused work and consciousness of time. Although this combined responsibility of making a shorter workweek work was fairly successful, Femma Wereldvrouwen also faced some challenges, such as the lack of “fun” interaction through breaks, and time for “white space” in work.

In 2019, Femma vzw, a Belgian women’s organisation, as an experiment, implemented a 30-hour workweek within the organisation. For a period of 12 months, all full-time employees switched from a 36-hour workweek to a 30-hour workweek. During this experiment, a longitudinal time-use study into the impact of the working time reduction on the working life and private life of these employees was carried out. The study included five waves of data collection before, during and after the experiment over a period of two and a half years. Each wave consisted of an online 7-day time use diary, a pre-diary questionnaire and a post-diary questionnaire. This research report discusses the first general findings of the study, using the first four waves. Some key findings are: the employees had clear wishes and expectations about what they wanted to do with their extra time at the start of the 30-hour workweek. Above all, the wish for more personal time was high. Most employees took this extra time as one additional non-working day per week, namely Wednesday or Friday. The extra free hours mostly were spent on household work, care and personal care, although this was not exactly what they wished for. However, employees did experience less household stress, less leisure time pressure and a better work-life balance.

When everyday life becomes ever more permeated by digital technologies, many older people join ICT trainings to improve their digital skills. Given that digital skills include more than the command of technology (for instance, changing social practices) teaching ICT to people who grew up long before internet and social media can be challenging. The purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical account of a key element for how teaching digital skills to older people can be made successful. Drawing on qualitative interview data with 26 ICT instructors as well as concepts from sociological theory (lifeworld, role-taking) and cognitive science (dual process model), we argue that ICT training needs to take into account the lifeworlds of older participants. In order to be successful, ICT trainings have to appeal to the current lifeworlds of older people while at the same time overcome mismatching lifeworlds. By connecting content and pedagogics to the older adults' needs, values, and desires, instructors can successfully help integrate new skills into the lifeworld of the older participants.

This paper investigates why non-attendees of museums in Flanders (Belgium) do not visit and how these reasons for not attending are related to gender. The hierarchical constraints framework is appl...

A weeklong diary study ( N = 460) into the exposure to news of Belgian (Flemish) adult media users (aged 25–45) shows that their information consumption is currently relatively diverse. An explanation for the observed diversity is that news consumers in Dutch-speaking Belgium have a wide array of internally balanced news titles and channels at their disposal, which they also actively consult. In addition, the study demonstrates that news consumption patterns span across all media platforms. This study thus illustrates that there is a weak influence of ideological attitudes and psychosocial dispositions on news consumption, measured in time of consumption per media title or channel. These findings call for a revision of theories of selective exposure that disregard the influence that the diversity of information supply can have on the selection procedures of recipients.

How teachers spend their working time is crucial for the quality of teaching and teachers’ well-being. For this reason, teacher surveys generally measure the number of hours worked. By comparing estimates from survey questions and time-diaries, we argue that commonly used survey methods are prone to bias. We use results of a unique, large-scale study where 7,486 teachers kept a diary for seven days resulting in 1,250,000 hours of registered activities. Large differences in the accuracy of estimating working time exist in sub-activities (e.g., school organisation) and job characteristics (e.g., part-time versus full-time). Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Everyday life is neither the result of mundane, common-sense, habitual human behaviour as theorized by the agency-centred approach of methodological individualism nor the sheer result of the conformation to temporal norms of the structural approach of social holism. In fact, everyday life is marked by a rhythmic, temporal structure that is brought into effect by the modality of repetitive action. In this article, a praxeological approach is used to conceptualize everyday life as a social structure in terms of its underlying stable practices. Multi-day time-diary data and optimal matching with clustering techniques show empirically that everyday life consists of stable practices that vary in function of temporal and social demands, in function of handling coordination of practice, and in function of embedding these practices in collectively shared temporal orders.

Background Regular physical activity decreases the risk for numerous non-communicable diseases. The World Health Organization has suggested physical activity (PA) guidelines that, based on previous research, would provide health benefits to those who comply. The first guideline for health benefits suggests 150 min of moderate PA or equivalent per week. The guideline for additional health benefits suggests 300 min of PA or equivalent per week. The objective of this paper is to analyze to what extent these two WHO PA guidelines for adults are met in the Belgian region of Flanders. Furthermore, we are interested to see which groups are more or less likely to meet the PA guidelines. Methods Crosstables and logistic regressions are used on a sample of 3028 adults in the Belgian region of Flanders. All respondents filled in a 7-day time-diary in which they continuously recorded all their activities. Results Firstly, men are more likely than women to comply to both PA guidelines. Secondly, living with a partner increases the odds to comply to the guidelines. For men, this is the case for both guidelines, while for women, this only applies to the first guideline. Thirdly, women with a young child have lower odds to comply to the guidelines, while having a young child doesn’t have an effect for men. Conclusion Previous research on meeting PA guidelines in Flanders shows diverging results. Time-diary data allows researchers to strictly follow the WHO definition when operationalizing compliance to PA guidelines. There is a need for future research that combines time-diaries with a PA questionnaire and accelerometer data to gain more insights on the benefits and pitfalls of both methodologies. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13690-019-0341-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The question when people work is almost always reduced to the question how much people work on (non-)standard working hours. In this contribution, we applied optimal matching techniques using Belgian data from a weekly work grid ( n = 6330) to identify individuals’ work timing patterns, offering a richer analytical approach than most previous studies on (non-)standard work time. Results show that such analysis captures much more and much more relevant variation in the timing of work than simple questions. Three general and 10 more detailed weekly work patterns are identified based on two dimensions of paid work: the number of hours worked and the percentage of hours worked on non-standard periods of time. Additional analyses show that men’s work patterns depend only on job characteristics. For women, work patterns are also explained by socio-economic factors including education, presence of working partner and presence of children.

Previous research showed that second-generation migrants are less successful than natives when entering the labour market. This article analyses the early career occupational mobility of young people from a Turkish or Moroccan descent in Flanders. We compare the progress in socio-economic status (SES) that youngsters of native and non-native descent make from their first to later jobs at the start of their career. Both immigrants and native majority young adults experience upward occupational mobility during this crucial phase of their occupational careers. The gap between native and ethnic minority youth, however, does not narrow over the course of the years, with one exception because youth with non-traditional migrant background who migrated at a young age are more upwardly mobile during the first years of their career than the natives. The future career is largely determined by the characteristics of the start of the occupational career, and educational attainment even before. A first job with a relative low occupational status does however offer better opportunities for Turkish and Moroccan second-generation migrants than for native majority youth to do some catching up later on. In combination with a long-term negative impact of initial unemployment, these ethnic minority youth perhaps are best off with starting to work as soon as possible after school leaving.

In dit rapport buigen we ons over de eerste jaren van de arbeidsmarktloopbaan van Vlaamse schoolverlaters van drie types studierichtingen waarnaar veel vraag is op de arbeidsmarkt: wetenschappelijk en technisch opgeleiden (STEM), verpleegkundigen en meer algemeen zorgopgeleiden en leraren.

The interdisciplinary Time Use Observatory workshops learned that transportation research and social sciences strive for the same multi-day time-diary data in order to make interferences about human habitual (travel) behavior. It also is learned that when it comes to the mathematics and analytics involved both disciplines are miles apart, though both with founded reasons to do so. In brief, transportation research relies on modeling to make predictions whereas social sciences apply statistics to their data to draw conclusions. In line with the interdisciplinary philosophy of the Time Use Observatory workshops, this contribution aims to communicate 30 years of experience in analyzing time-diary data. To do so, it demonstrates the latter by calculation transportation habits and aims to illustrate that multi-day time-diary data might have some additional benefits for computing temporal regularities. It shows that including a flexible notion of both regular tempo (or recurrence) of activities (e.g. every day) and regular timing of activities (e.g. always at 6 am) produces different results for different kind of transportation purposes. It also shows that these calculations using multi-day time-diary data result in an indicator at the individual level that can be analyzed in terms of socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics. This work concludes that partitioning temporal regularities in regular reoccurrence and regular timing is a crucial element of (transportation) habits.

Objective: This article examines the diverse ways in which young adults develop both their professional career and family life in the years immediately after they complete their education. Building a career and starting a family often occur simultaneously in this stage of life. By studying the simultaneous developments in these life domains, we can gain a better understanding of this complex interplay. Methods: The data consist of a sample of 1,657 young adults born in 1976 who were interviewed as part of the SONAR survey of Flanders at ages 23, 26, and 29 about their education, their entry into and early years on the labour market, and their family life. Sequence analysis is used to study the timing of union formation and having children among these young adults, as well as how these events are related to their work career. Multinomial regression analysis is applied to help us gain a better understanding of the extent to which these life course patterns are determined by education and economic status at the start of the career. Results: The results reveal a set of work-family trajectories which vary in terms of the extent of labour market participation and the type and timing of family formation. Various aspects of the trajectory are found to be determined by different dimensions of an individual's educational career (duration, level, field of study). Education is more relevant for women than for men, as a man's trajectory is more likely than a woman's to be determined by the first job. Conclusions: By using a simultaneous approach which takes into account both family and work, this life course analysis confirms that men have a head start on the labour market, and examines the factors which influence the distinct trajectories of young women and men.

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In psychiatry, the social zeitgeber theory argues that social life provides important social cues that entrain circadian rhythms. Disturbance of these social cues might lead do dis-entrainment of circadian rhythms and evoke somatic symptoms that increase the risk of mood disorders. In preventing and treating patients with bipolar disorders, the Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy (IPSRT) relies on the Social Rhythm Metric (SRM) to (re)establish patients’ social cues and an re-entrain circadian rhythms. Since the SRM quantifies social rhythms that are derived from a patient’s interaction with a social environment, this contribution (a) calculates the SRM of the social environment of a representative healthy population study (n = 1249), (b) evaluates the robustness of the SRM as a quantifier of social rhythms by matching the scores of the pilot study, revealing the near absence of variance across population characteristics and investigation months—circadian rhythms need to be entrained for every month and for everyone—and (c) examines its use in IPSRT by relating high SRM-scores to lower psychological distress (p = 0.004) and low SRM-scores to higher social and emotional dysfunction (p = 0.018).

User behaviour plays a key role in the energy demand of residential buildings, and its importance will only increase when moving towards nearly Zero-Energy homes. However, little detailed information is available on how users interact with their homes. Due to the lack of information, user behaviour is often included in building performance simulations through one standard user pattern. To obtain more accurate energy demand simulations, user patterns are needed that capture the wide variations in behaviour without making simulations overly complicated. To this end, we developed a probabilistic model which generates realistic occupancy sequences that include three possible states: (1) at home and awake, (2) sleeping or (3) absent. This paper reports on the methodology used to construct this occupancy model based on the 2005 Belgian time-use survey. Using hierarchical clustering, we were able to identify seven typical occupancy patterns. The modelling of individual occupancy sequences based on this method enables to include highly differentiated yet realistic behaviour that is relevant to building simulations and can be used for individualised feedback based on peer comparison. The model's calibration data is available for download [1] .

During the French Revolution and inspired by the Enlightenment, an attempt was made to replace the Gregorian calendar (which was based on ‘irrational’ overlapping cycles linked to religious celebrations) by the Republican calendar (which was based on ‘rational’ clearly nested cycles in accordance with the metric system). Although the starting point was an ideological and aesthetic expression of rationalism, this calendar also had to fulfill a coordinating and integrating function. Thus the calendric reform faced a tremendous challenge: re-creating a socio-temporal order. One of the crucial socio-temporal frameworks that guide daily behavior in Western societies is the 7-day cycle of the week. In the new calendar, the week was to be replaced by the 10-day cycle or the décade , which turned out the greatest stumbling block for calendar-reformation. Theoretically this is explained by the social nature of time and the ‘second nature’ of time reckoning, but the unawareness of a socially established weekly rhythm in our daily behavior is hard to illustrate. Today, however, society is full of traces of so-called ‘big data’ that humans leave behind. This paper uses ‘big data’ on re-charges of electronic keys to show that even though a 10-day re-charging cycle is proposed, a 7-day re-charging cycle will surface.