Outline of the 2001 Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities

1. Purpose

The purpose of this survey is to clarify the actual state of people's life in order to obtain basic data for several kinds of administrative measures. For this purpose, it surveys people's time allocation and leisure activities such as Internet use, studies and researches, sports, hobbies and amusements, volunteer activities, and travel and excursions.

The survey has been conducted every five years since 1976, and the 2001 survey was the sixth.

In the 2001 survey, in addition to Questionnaire A (pre-coding system), which is the same form as questionnaires in former surveys, Questionnaire B (after-coding system) was newly introduced in order to obtain more detailed results of people's time allocation.

2. Legal Basis

The survey is a Designated Statistics Survey (No.114) under the Statistics Law (Law No.18, 1947) and is carried out in accordance with the Ordinance for the Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (Ordinance No.38 of the Prime Minister's Office, 1981).

3. Survey Date

The survey was conducted as of October 20, 2001. However, as for the survey on time allocation, two straight days within the nine-day period from October 13 to 21 were designated for each enumeration district.

4. Survey Sample

The survey was carried out in 6,440 enumeration districts that were selected from among the 1995 Population Census Enumeration Districts. Questionnaire A was used in the 6,104 enumeration districts, and Questionnaire B in the 336 enumeration districts.

About 77,000 households in the enumeration districts were selected and about 200,000 members of the households 10 years old or more were surveyed. About 73,000 households were surveyed by Questionnaire A, and about 4,000 households by Questionnaire B.

However, the following were excluded from the survey samples.

• Foreign diplomatic and consular corps and foreign military personnel (including their family or party members)
• The Self-Defense Force personnel living in barracks or vessels
• Sentenced prisoners or persons in reformatories
• Persons living in social welfare facilities
• Inpatients of hospitals or clinics
• Persons living on the water

5. Survey Items

1. For all household members 10 years old and over
   • Name and sex
   • Relationship to the household head
   • Birth year and month
   • Marital status
   • Education
   • Activity of caring
   • Activity of use of mobile phones, personal computers or other information related equipment during the past year.

   (Following 6 items were surveyed only by Questionnaire A)

   • Activity of Internet use during the past year
   • Activity of studies and researches during the past year
   • Activity of sports during the past year
   • Activity of hobbies and amusements during the past year
   • Activity of volunteer activities during the past year
   • Activity of travel and excursions during the past year
     
   • Diary and weather for a two day period
2. For all household members 15 years old and over
   • Usual economic activity
   • Employment status
   • Occupation
   • Usual working hours per week

   (Following 3 items were surveyed only by Questionnaire A)

   • Number of persons engaged in the enterprise as a whole
   • Usual one-way commuting time
   • Regular holidays per week
3. For all household members 60 years old and over (Questionnaire A only)
   • Place in which their own children live
4. Household attributes
   • Type of residence
   • Number of residence rooms
   • Possession of car(s)
   • Annual income
   • Use of caring assistance
   • Absent members of the household
   • Relationship to the household head, age and education for persons under 10 years old
   • Kind of household (for one-person households)

6. Questionnaire (2001 survey)

• QuestionnaireA (pre-coding system)(PDF:1,164KB)   
• QuestionnaireB (after-coding system)(PDF:783KB)   

7. Method of the Survey

1. Routes of the survey
   The survey was conducted through the routes shown below.
   Director-General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Director-General of the Statistics Bureau)
     |
   Prefectural Governors
     |
   Supervisors
     |
   Enumerators
     |
   Households
2. Field survey
   The field survey was conducted according to the following procedures:
   • Preparation of the household list
     Preceding the survey date, the enumerator visited the enumeration district assigned to him/her and prepared a list of all households within the district.
   • Selection of the sample household
     Sample households were selected from the list according to the prescribed procedure at the Prefectural government.
   • Survey field work
     Preceding the survey date, the enumerator visited the selected households to distribute questionnaires and requested their members to fill them out. After the survey date, the enumerator visited the households again to collect the filled-in questionnaires.

8. Publication

The results were tabulated from the collected questionnaires at the Statistics Center. The Statistics Bureau released the results of leisure activities in July 2002, the results of daily time allocation in September 2002 as the results on Questionnaire A, and released the results on Questionnaire B in March 2003. The reports were published as the following:

Questionnaire A

Volume 1
Time Use for Japan (1) - Daily Time Allocation by Sex, Age and Economic Activities -
Time Use for Japan (2) - Daily Time Allocation by Family Type of Households -

Volume 2
Leisure Activities for Japan

Volume 3
Time Use for Prefectures

Volume 4
Leisure Activities for Prefectures (1) - Internet Use / Studies and Researches -
Leisure Activities for Prefectures (2) - Sports / Hobbies and Amusements -
Leisure Activities for Prefectures (3) - Volunteer Activities / Travel and Excursions

Volume 5
Activities by Time of the Day for Japan and Prefectures - Daily Time Allocation by Time of the Day -

Volume 6
Summary Results and Analyses

Questionnaire B

Volume 7
Time Use for Japan by Detailed Activity Coding