There's been a bit of talk about rolling out the #TimeUseSurvey to capture what's happening with unpaid care work at the moment, and here is what I think... Very keen to hear thoughts and differing opinions... 1/

Now would not be a great time for the TUS. The TUS is a massive survey instrument designed to capture a lot of data, and involves fieldwork including paper time diaries in the methodology /2

From my understanding, it's intended to capture long term trends in time use, and to compare time use trends across different contexts because of the similarities in the methodology. It will take a substantial period of time to code and analyse the data 3/

So it wouldn't necessarily be something we'd have findings from in the short term. It will be a really useful as a long-term policy tool, by showing in detail with a lot of rigour, time use trends over time. 4/

So why we absolutely want #TimeUseData on this specific period, from what I understand, the full TUS is not necessarily the best survey instrument. Rather we'd want to use something more targeted to capture what's happening in these very specific circumstances

and which could provide data in the shorter term, or something we already have comparison points for like the questions on unpaid care work in the HILDA survey. But keen to hear other thoughts 6/