Depositing Data with the MTUS

People and agencies responsible for collecting national sample time use surveys or other large scale time use studies are invited to consider depositing data with the MTUS. The MTUS includes background variables which are sufficiently non-distinct to protect the identity of respondents. Other data collected in original studies not generally a part of the main MTUS will not be released to users without the permission of depositors, though original data may be used to later add anonymised background variables. Data depositors will receive their own copies of the MTUS, along with regular updates.

Depositors may choose to designate deposited data as fitting into one of two categories:

• Class A microdata covers unrestricted information that may be distributed to all registered users of the study, provided they acknowledge the original data sources in publications and abide by other conditions of registering as an MTUS user.
• Class B microdata requires the registered user to sign an additional agreement with the original data provider.

Should you or your agency wish to convert your data into MTUS format, please download our MTUS Coding Procedures document along with a schema file containing all variable and value labels. Examples of the SPSS syntax and STATA do converting original files into MTUS format can be found in the appendix of the MTUS documentation.