Flexible work schedules and family time allocation: Assessment of a system change on individual behavior using self-report logs.
Simple daily logs prove that schedule flexibility gives families more evening time together.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Federal workers filled out daily logs for four weeks. They wrote down how they spent every hour.
Half the workers got flextime. They could start and end work when they wanted. The other half kept fixed hours.
Researchers compared evening family time between the two groups using the logs.
What they found
Workers on flextime spent more evening hours with family. The logs showed clear increases.
Fixed-schedule workers had no change. Flextime gave parents more time at home after work.
How this fits with other research
Bordi et al. (1990) extends this idea. They turned simple written logs into active self-help checklists. Adults with brain injuries used them to spot home hazards. The same tool that measured behavior in 1981 became an intervention in 1990.
Pichardo et al. (2026) shows these logs are trustworthy. Caregivers tracking feeding treatment effects matched trained observers 87-a large share of the time. This backs up the 1981 finding that self-report logs can be reliable.
Tilford et al. (2015) and Hayse et al. (2025) look at family spillovers too. They show child sleep treatments improve parent fatigue and quality of life. Like flextime, one person's schedule change ripples through the whole family.
Why it matters
You can measure family-level outcomes with simple daily logs. Ask parents to track evening family time for two weeks. If you change session times or give parents schedule flexibility, check if family time goes up. The logs will tell you if your clinical decisions help the whole family, not just the client.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study assessed the effects of a flexible work schedule ("flextime") on time allocated to children and spouse by federal workers. Direct behavioral observations of family, home, and work functions were precluded because of the cost involved in observing many people for long periods of time. In order to obtain detailed individual data, participants completed hour-by-hour activity logs a mean of twice per week for 35 weeks. Participants received prior training on log completion, initial feedback on the detail of their log entries, and were prompted to complete the forms. Four different procedures assessing reliability indicated a corroboration rate of 80% with other sources. Log data were reliably reduced to nine categories such as "PM time with children" and 37 subcategories such as "time at dinner." The log data were presented in time-series form and the use of a quasi-experimental design showed that participants who altered their work schedule were able to spend more PM time with their families. The log data demonstrated that the capacity exists to assess closely the effects of large-scale changes at a micro-behavioral level, but other methods are needed to make complex self-reporting systems less expensive and more capable of immediate monitoring of the intervention's effects.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1981 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1981.14-39