How to Analyze Survey Data Pertaining to the "Time Bind", and How "Not" to Analyze Such Data

This note considers various ways of analyzing survey data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind (Hochschild, 1997), and it comments on the particular analysis presented by Brown and Booth (2002). The following kinds of problems will be discussed here: (1) problems pertaining to the measurement of concepts, (2) problems pertaining to the selection of the data to be analyzed, and (3) problems pertaining to the selection of the statistical models to be used in the analysis. Appropriate methods for dealing with each of these three kinds of problems are introduced and described in the present note. When these appropriate methods are compared with the particular methods applied by Brown and Booth (2002), we find fault with the latter methods. Our attention in this note is focused on the analysis of data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind, but the general approach presented here can also be applied more generally to study other theses of interest in the social sciences.