Diary versus questionnaire information on time spent on housework – The case of Norway

Information on housework-time is important for understanding the daily life organisation of different population groups, especially parents. However, time-use surveys, which are usually seen as the best method for capturing information on unpaid work, are very costly and are conducted rather rarely in Norway. Hence, we want to assess whether housework can be adequately measured by other methods. Internationally, a great deal of work has been undertaken in cross validating diaries and questionnaires. It is often found that questionnaires generate somewhat larger estimates for housework-time than diaries, but the reporting gap varies between groups of people. It is assumed that social desirability plays an important role so that people feeling pressures to do much housework overreport their contributions more than others. In Norway, the housewife role has nearly vanished, and people now rarely meet social prescriptions to do much housework. This might imply less over-reporting in questionnaires. The present paper compares estimates for housework-time from the diary-section and the questionnaire-section in the latest Norwegian Time Use Survey with particular focus on parents. Looking at all adults we find only modest differences in the time-estimates between the two methods, but the gap varies considerably between age groups.