Walking behaviours from the 1965–2003 American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS)

Abstract

Background: The American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS) represents a harmonised historical data file of time use by adults, amalgamating surveys collected in 1965-66, 1975-76, 1985, 1992-94, and 2003. The objectives of time-use studies have ranged from evaluating household and other unpaid production of goods and services, to monitoring of media use, to comparing lifestyles of more and less privileged social groups, or to tracking broad shifts in social behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process and utility of identifying and compiling data from the AHTUS to describe a range of walking behaviours collected using time-use survey methods over almost 40 years in the USA.

Differences in behavior, time, location, and built environment between objectively measured utilitarian and recreational walking

“…Yet it could be argued that walking to a fitness facility has explicit transportation utility, because it replaces a trip by car or transit which would not be classified as driving or riding transit for recreation. The ambiguity between trip purpose and destination was also found in another study that defined walking while visiting historic sites as recreational walking (Tudor-Locke et al, 2007). Furthermore, self-reported data being subjective (Sugiyama et al, 2012) may lead to inconsistencies between or even within participants.…”

Implicit Attitudes and Explicit Motivation Prospectively Predict Physical Activity

“…A great deal of daily physical activity is unintentional and occurs outside of formal exercise settings [9]. For example, people are regularly confronted with decisions about whether to take the elevator or stairs or whether to take the first available parking spot or hunt for one closer to their destination.…”

Time Spent in Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors on the Working Day

“…We also report the same variables for the "doer" subsample; an accepted time use term referring to individuals who reported doing any of the specified activity. 21 Analysis of the doer subsample is a typical analytical approach in time use studies [21][22][23] and is especially relevant for activities performed only by a subsample. That is, the resulting estimates are not distorted by an abundance of data on participants who do none of the activity.…”