In this project the Labor Force Survey (LFS), the Work Grid (WG) and the Time Use Survey (TUS) will be merged into one database with detailed information on work related characteristics and working time patterns. For the first time in Europe (by the FPS-Economy) all three surveys are conducted simultaneously among the same respondents and same households according to the EUROSTAT-guidelines. LFS is considered to be the ‘golden standard’ for assessing information on the labour force and its background characteristics. An important drawback is however the stylized manner of questioning working hours. Respondents are asked to recall the actual working time for the past week. LFS also contains only limited information on the timing of work. In TUS the respondents register during one weekday and one weekend day all activities (including paid and unpaid work) in full detail (including the place and with whom). The downside of TUS is its limited observation window of only two days. Therefore, working respondents in TUS also have to fill in a ‘work grid’ (WG) in which the timing of all paid work activities (without extra information) for a full week is recorded. This new merged data set will combine the strengths of three rich data sources: (1) the detailed work related background information of LFS; (2) the context information of the work activities of TUS and (3) the detailed information on working times in the week cycle of WG.
