Page 86 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Capitals and the use of time 77

can research the ways in which individuals structure their days and the pat-
terns of a typical week. These are often very informative ways of identifying
patterns of activity that might not be found if people are simply asked about
one mode of activity in isolation. As we found in the research that informs
Globalization and Belonging (Savage et al. 2005), when asked about the pattern
of a week and a typical weekend, activities and memberships of groups are
sometimes brought to mind in interviewees when perhaps they had been over-
looked. However, it is important that these activities on daily and weekly cycles
are related to stages in lifecycles or to the life course. Berthoud and Gershuny
(2000: 230–1) in their discussion of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS;
see later), distinguish between eight different life stages for individuals:
• dependent child
• young adult
• unattached
• young family
• older family
• older childless
• retired
• old/infirm.
As Berthoud and Gershuny (2000: 231) suggest: ‘This categorisation is
intended as a genuine sequence’, although, of course, some people will miss
stages. Thus, the patterns of time use through a day, week or year, can be
connected to the particular life stage that people are living at that point. For
example, those with young children are more likely to engage in some activi-
ties compared with those without and so on. This matters to the way that
people use their time and to their experience of a range of activities. As will
be discussed later in the chapter, it has impacts on the way in which people
seek to help their children to progress through the education system. It also
has implications for the way in which people connect to the media.
The BHPS is, as its name suggests, a panel study where broadly the same
people are revisited with similar questions at regular intervals. This is a very
powerful instrument for tracking social and cultural changes. A similar exer-
cise has been performed for television viewing by the British Film Institute
(BFI) tracking study. The results of this are summarized by Gauntlett and
Hill (1999). The research that this book reports on had its beginnings in a
1988 study where 22,000 people wrote a diary about their television viewing
on 1 November 1988. On the basis of this study, the BFI tracking study was
initiated, which studied a sample of people who ‘self-selected’ from the earlier
research. The sample was ‘generally’ representative of the UK population. At
the beginning of the study there were 509 respondents and at the conclu-
sion, there were 427. Between 1991 and 1996 the respondents completed
15 questionnaire diaries. The study produced a number of significant findings,
especially for the arguments being advanced here.
Drawing on the key findings that are summarized in the book, it is
possible to pull out important points with respect to: television and everyday
life; news consumption; transitions and change; personal meanings; video
and technology in the home; the retired and elderly; gender; and television