Quality of time
The type of time available to individuals is an important factor impacting their sense of control in life.
Quality of time scale
Having good quality of time use is an important contributor to wellbeing. Enjoying how you spend your time, being able to direct how you spend your time, and being able to spend enough time with friends and family, sleeping, recreating, and doing paid and unpaid work, all contribute to personal wellbeing.
This measure shows how Canberrans feel about their use of time across the following activities:
- commuting
- doing paid work
- caring
- volunteering
- doing housework
- being outdoors
- seeing family and friends
- sleeping
- exercising.
As different people vary in the amount of time they want to spend on these different activities, the quality of time use scale is based on the extent to which people report doing as much of each activity as they wish to, versus reporting they are doing less or more than a desired level of each activity.
High quality of time use decreased in 2024, to 18.2% from 27.6% in 2022.
However, there was also a decrease in the number of people reporting low quality of time use – from 52.3% in 2022 to 42.7% in 2024.
Overall, the majority of Canberrans spend less time than desired doing things such as exercising, being creative and sleeping.
Data source
Data for this indicator are sourced from the University of Canberra Living Well in the ACT Region survey. Detailed survey data, survey user guide and published reports from the survey can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.
Chart description
Line graph of percentage of respondents who reported high, moderate, or low levels of quality use of time in the ACT, between 2019 and 2024.
In 2024:
- 42.7% reported low quality use of time compared to 52.3% in 2022
- 18.2% reported high quality use of time compared to 27.6% in 2022
- 39.1% reported moderate quality use of time compared to 20.1% in 2022.
Technical notes
The Living Well in the ACT Region survey, conducted by the University of Canberra, aims to measure, track and understand the wellbeing and resilience of adult residents living in the Australian Capital Territory region of Australia. It examines factors known to affect wellbeing and resilience at the individual, household, community and regional level.
When generating data for the ACT, statistical weighting is used to address differences between the sample of people who respond to the survey, and the characteristics of the ACT adult population.
Data are produced from this survey for different groups of people in the ACT. The ‘overall response’ category represents responses at the ACT population level. Where reliable estimates can be produced, data are also presented for Canberrans by: gender, age, cultural background, gender identity and sexuality, carer role and experience of disability. Not all differences over time or between groups are statistically significant: information on confidence intervals for the data presented here is available in data tables that can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.
Care is needed when interpreting the differences in findings between groups as the descriptive statistics published here show where there are differences in wellbeing, but not what has caused those differences in wellbeing.
Further information about the survey can be found at Living Well in the ACT Region or by contacting regionalwellbeing@canberra.edu.au.
