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This paper discusses the challenges associated with collecting time-use data in developing countries. The paper suggests potential solutions, concentrating on the two most common time-use methods used in development settings: stylized questions and time diaries. The paper identifies a significant lack of rigorous empirical research comparing these methods in development settings, and begins to fill this gap by analyzing data from Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index surveys in Bangladesh and Uganda. The surveys include stylized questions and time diary estimates for the same individual. The study finds limited evidence that stylized questions are more feasible (in terms of interview length) but also less accurate, compared with time diaries. These results are attributed to the relatively greater cognitive burden imposed on respondents by stylized questions. The paper discusses the importance of broadening the scope of time-use research to capture the quantity and quality of time, to achieve richer insights into gendered time-use patterns and trends. The paper suggests a path forward that combines mainstream time-use data collection methods with promising methodological innovations from other disciplines.

Measurement Error --- Recall Error --- Time Use

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Many more impact evaluations could be done, and at lower unit cost, if evaluators could avoid the need for baseline data using objective socio-economic surveys and rely instead on retrospective subjective questions on how outcomes have changed, asked post-intervention. But would the results be reliable? This paper tests a rapid-appraisal, "shoestring," method using subjective recall for welfare changes. The recall data were collected at the end of a full-scale evaluation of a large poor-area development program in China. Qualitative recalls of how living standards have changed are found to provide only weak and biased signals of the changes in consumption as measured from contemporaneous surveys. Importantly, the shoestring method was unable to correct for the selective placement of the program favoring poor villages. The results of this case study are not encouraging for future applications of the shoestring method, although similar tests are needed in other settings.

Baseline survey --- Economic Theory & Research --- Housing & Human Habitats --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poor areas --- Poverty Monitoring & Analysis --- Recall error --- Retrospective data --- Science Education --- Scientific Research & Science Parks --- Social Development --- China

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This paper investigates the accuracy of recall data by comparing administrative records with retrospective, self-reported survey responses to income and asset questions for a sample of self-employed households from coastal India. It finds that the magnitude of the recall error increases over time, in part because respondents rely less on memory and instead infer earnings based on past earnings. Individuals tend to recall monthly earnings more accurately when they are higher than the median. These results imply that the variance estimated from the self-reported earnings distribution will be lower than the real one. The paper also finds that data reported by income earners are more accurate than those by their wives. In addition, the use of time cues can worsen accuracy if they are not relevant to the respondent. Where the recall questions are placed in the two-hour long survey, however, does not affect accuracy.

Access to Finance --- Economic Theory & Research --- Educational Sciences --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Fiscal & Monetary Policy --- Measurement error --- Private Sector Development --- Recall error --- Self-employment --- Statistical & Mathematical Sciences --- Telescoping