Project information

Time-Use Research: Key Interests and Emerging Avenues

This project involved a comprehensive scoping review of time-use research that uncovered both the primary areas of interest and the gaps in this rapidly expanding field. The visualization serves as an informative guide for anyone keen to understand the scope and range of time-use studies.

The infographic was produced with the help of Trust-IT Services Srl and funding support of Horizon Booster program.

The infographic highlights an exponential growth in the field of time use research, with the count impressively reaching over 500+ papers by the end of 2022. This data is based on the number of time-use research papers indexed on the Scopus database.

The infographic pinpoints popular topics in time-use research like gender inequalities in unpaid work, health, and the environment. A methodical approach to the scoping review is outlined, starting from the Scopus database search, progressing through data pre-processing, stop-word removal, keyword search, and finally employing Non-negative Matrix Factorization model for topic analysis. In total, 4,344 articles were analyzed to derive these insights.

Moreover, the visualization underscores the thematic concerns of these studies, spanning various topics like adolescent health, care and caregiving, energy demand, and more.

The infographic outlines potential directions for the future:

  • A sharper focus on different facets of leisure activities, particularly in the realms of health-related or sleep studies.
  • Investigating the dynamics of "pairings", diving into understanding with whom individuals spend their time.
  • Advocating for increased collaboration between social scientists and public health experts to bridge knowledge gaps.
  • For those eager to dive deeper, a QR code is conveniently embedded to facilitate further exploration.

THis work was supported by the European Union (Horizon 2020).