Time Use PRA Guide and Toolkit for Child and Youth Development Practitioners

For practitioners and researchers interested in the safety, wellbeing, and development of children and youth, researching time use yields important indicators, as well as valuable contextual information to inform the design of interventions and the measurement of outcomes, Information on time use sheds light on important topics like school attendance, access to opportunities for play and associating with peers, safety, child labor, and gender inequalities.

The STRIVE Philippines project, which has the goal of improving the well-being of vulnerable children and youth through economic strengthening of households and individuals, created a time use PRA tool for participants ages 8-18 to gather key information used for project evaluation. The tool was piloted in January 2010 with a follow-up in January 2012. Drawing from that experience, this guide provides an overview of issues to be taken into account when researching child time use with PRA methodology, along with a sample tool.