Development and validation of a time use questionnaire for women in family farming

Abstract

Abstract This study develops and validates the Time‑Use Questionnaire for Women in Family Farming (TUQ‑FF), a context‑specific instrument designed to measure productive, domestic, caregiving, and social‑participation activities among rural women in Chile. Drawing on international time‑use classifications, the instrument was constructed through a mixed‑method, multi‑stage process that included a literature review, two rounds of expert judgment, a pilot study, and large‑scale field implementation with 1,120 participants. Expert evaluation—integrating Kendall’s W and Aiken’s V with qualitative assessments—guided substantial revisions to enhance coherence, relevance, and cultural adequacy. The pilot study revealed cognitive and linguistic barriers associated with irregular, simultaneous rural tasks, leading to the adoption of a five‑point ordinal scale aligned with women’s everyday perceptions of time. Convergent and discriminant validity were supported through theoretically consistent correlations among productive, domestic, transportation, and income‑related measures, while reliability analyses confirmed adequate internal consistency for caregiving and domestic‑work components. The TUQ‑FF offers a concise, feasible, and interviewer‑administered alternative to conventional time‑use instruments, making visible the simultaneity and intensity of rural women’s unpaid work. It provides a methodological contribution for advancing gender‑responsive rural policy design and constitutes a transferable framework for time‑use measurement in other developing‑country agricultural contexts.