Measurement of Time Spent Communicating

Abstract

The relative amount of time people spend in workday activities was estimated by both an observational and questionnaire method. Results from professional, technical, administrative and clerical people in a communications research and development laboratory show that 50%-80% of the workday is spent in communicating, two-thirds of that in talking. People tend to underestimate time spent talking and overestimate time spent reading and writing. Telephone and equipment use is estimated correctly on the average. People in one-man offices and laboratories spend more time talking than people in multi-man offices, but this result is confounded with supervisory level.How much time do people spend talking, reading, writing, using equipment, and performing the other activities which are part of their working day? In particular, how is a person's time divided between the devices with which he works and communicating with other people? If most of the time is spent interacting with devices, then improvement in man-machine interaction would seem the primary approach to job improvement. If the majority of time is spent in communicating with people, then improvement in person-person interaction may be a more fruitful approach to job improvement. The study described below is addressed primarily at the question about how people divide their working time between communicating with other people (talking, writing, reading) and working with equipment.

Relationships of Job Categories and Organizational Levels to Use of Communication Channels, Including Electronic Mail: A Meta‐analysis and Extension*

“…Table I11 shows the results of the joint linear model. The method of data collection was a significant source of variation for face-to-face, total oral, writing Croston and Goulding (1967 Kefalas and Schoderbek (1973) N = 89 (SR) meetings Kelley (1964)' N = 4 managers (OBS) Klemmer and Snyder (1972)' scientists and engineers N=3132 (OBS, EV) N = 2626 (SR, EV)…”

24 Hours in a Day: A Listening Update to the Time Studies

“…The instrument developed for this study permitted multitasking, which has been known to confound previous time studies (Barker et al, 1980;Davis, 2001;Klemmer, & Snyder, 1972). However, this study employed the estimation methods used by Klemmer and Snyder (1972) and Nielsen Media Research (Ohlemacher, 2006), a technique that normed multitasked time to 100% (Klemmer & Snyder, 1972).…”

“…For example, Breiter (1971) targeted homemakers; Klemmer and Snyder (1972), Hinrichs (1964), and Weinrauch and Swanda (1975) focused on business personnel; and Werner (1975) sampled a combination of students and working adults. These studies, while valuable, are not useful today because the population is different, and the studies were conducted prior to the increased used of technology.…”

Understanding the office: A social-analytic perspective

“…Any model would be a loose one, providing little more than a structure or framework through which to consider offices. In fact, the Interpretivist perspective notes it is not possible to develop a formal model of the office, since its underlying assumption-that offices are nondeterministic- , [17], [18], [%I, [41], and [62].…”