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collective celebrations (081210)’, ‘Making herbal and medicinal preparations (031170)’ or
‘Accompanying adults to social activities (071234)’.
Often cultural activities are treated as ‘leisure’, ‘free time’, or ‘non-productive’ by TUS. This may
not be appropriate in several respects. For example, a ‘coming of age’ festival – cultural
performance is likely to be rather ‘obligatory’ in relevant societies, involving many hours of
preparation. Even taking part in a festival like the Rio Carnival can be virtually a full-time job for a
certain number of weeks. In particular, time spent on home manufacture of craft products is
certainly cultural production activity.
As indicated in the ICATUS guidelines, the construction of the classifications for a time use
survey should follow certain principles:
� flexibility: the categories used should meet different needs of users;
� include a balanced and comprehensive coverage of activities (both productive and
personal, formal and informal);
� be detailed enough to distinguish between the activities of particular sub-populations
(young people, the elderly, women etc.). This is particularly important for cultural
behaviour issues; and
� able to harmonise with previous and existing statistical classifications at national and
international level (where possible).
The TUS is the most precise way to measure habits related to media, but it is very expensive. A
cost-effective alternative can be to include questions on time spent on cultural activities during
an ordinary week and week-end day in a sample population survey.
Household expenditure surveys
Household expenditure surveys can be seen as specific sample population surveys in which
households are asked to provide data or estimates of the amount of money they spend on
consuming goods and services and for other purposes over a given period of time. The aim of
these surveys is to provide a further measure of people’s engagement with culture by showing
the proportion of the total expenditure that households spend on cultural goods and services and
how this compares with other types of expenditure. Key indicators are generally related to the
monthly/yearly distribution of household expenditure by type of goods and services. Alongside
the main categories of household expenditure, namely on housing, food and transport, cultural
spending generally come under the heading of ‘leisure and culture’ expenditure. As in the case
of TUS, craft production of textiles, for example, may be categorised under household
production and include various elements such as raw materials, processing (tanning and dying
of textiles), and transport to market.
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