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Research, insights, impact — that’s what hbits stands for. You can read more on our blog, because sharing insights increases impact."

13 November 2025

Thoughts on the Smart Survey Implementation Project (SSI)

On April 3 and 4, Heerlen (The Netherlands) set the stage for the closing conference and workshop of the Smart Survey Implementation Project (SSI), funded by Eurostat and co-funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement Number: 101119594) . The goal of SSI was to draw lessons on integrating smart technologies into official statistics — not only from privacy and security perspectives, but also with a strong focus on user-centric design. The international collaboration and knowledge-sharing brought together 45 participants from different countries, national statistics institutes (NSIs), and universities. While smart…

Enak CortebeeckRead more
22 October 2025

Digital Transformation of Time Use Surveys in Germany

In 2022, Destatis and the regional statistical offices in Germany conducted the nationwide Time Use Survey (ZVE2022) using the Zeitverwendung application (the ZVE2022 app). It was the first time respondents were able to use an app to participate to the German Time Use Study. A recent article in Wirtschaft und Statistik (WISTA, Issue 5/2025) presents new methodological insights from the German Time Use Survey. The ZVE2022 is a household-based study that includes all household members aged 10 years and older. Participants were asked to complete a time diary for three days (two weekdays and one weekend day),…

Joeri MinnenRead more
16 March 2025

WINWIN4WORKLIFE Consortium Meeting #2 – Bratislava

On March 13–14, the consortium gathered in Bratislava for the second WINWIN4WORKLIFE project meeting, kindly hosted by our partner Trexima. Over two days of presentations, discussions, and collaborative workshops, we reviewed progress made during months 9–14 and looked ahead to upcoming milestones. Highlights included: Updates from all work packages, including project coordination (LISER), data collection (UNIZA), dissemination (EQY), and impact forecasting (TUM) Engaging sessions on stakeholder engagement and the Delphi survey approach (UPM) Analyses from employer and employee perspectives (ZEW & LISER) A lively roundtable on modelling approaches, and hands-on…

Enak CortebeeckRead more
28 February 2024

First results of the German time use study

On February 28, 2024, the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis) unveiled during a press conference in Berlin their first findings from the 2022 time use data collection run through the MOTUS data collection platform of hbits. More information and additional results are available from the press release: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/Zeitverwendung/_inhalt.html# The presentation also includes a comparison with data gathered in 2012/2013.

Joeri MinnenRead more
20 February 2024

WW4WL logo

Within the WW4WL project (EU Horizon), hbits is responsible for the visual identity and development of the project website. This is right up the alley of our designer, Enak Cortebeeck. Two logos were performed during the kick-off, and the one below emerged as the winner. The design refers to the 5 case studies within the project, but also to the work-life balance we need to achieve on a daily basis.

Joeri MinnenRead more
19 February 2024

[New Article] Calling it quits: a longitudinal study of factors associated with dropout among doctoral students.

Via the MOTUS data collection platform the VUB collects every year a survey on the progress of Phd students. A new article discusses longitudinal findings.

Joeri MinnenRead more
26 January 2024

Kick-off meeting WW4WL

The WW4WL project is an EU Horizon project funded by the European Commission and aims to better understand Remote Working Arrangements from a social, economic and spatial perspective. The coordinator of the project is LISER, Luxembourg. In total, besides hbits and LISER, 13 other European partners are participating in this project. The kick-off will take place in Belval, Luxembourg, on February 9, 2024. During this meeting, the 8 work packages will be presented. For hbits, the focus is on providing the MOTUS data collection platform to capture 5 different types…

Joeri MinnenRead more
28 November 2023

Designing, creating, and conducting the International Association’s Time Use Survey (IATUS) through MOTUS

Time use surveys (TUS) collect data on daily life. Yet a TUS is a complex survey because it exists of multiple tasks that need to be completed by a respondent, such as the completion of a household questionnaire, individual questionnaires and time-diaries for all eligible household members. As such, TUSs face numerous challenges, such as the need to replace the expensive and laborious paper- and-pencil method by a digitalized method with smart ways to reduce respondent burden amid the absence of updated guidelines to harmonize digitalized TUS across NSIs. Many of these…

Joeri MinnenRead more
20 November 2023

MOTUS moves to a more secure environment

Last month we again took a major step in upgrading MOTUS to an even more professional level. MOTUS is now hosted in a state-of-the art server infrastructure (domain: motusbuilder.io). By doing so our users and there studies were transmitted to the new infrastructure in an efficient way.

Joeri MinnenRead more
20 October 2023

[New Article] Answering Current Challenges of and Changes in Producing Official Time Use Statistics Using the Data Collection Platform MOTUS

The modernization of the production of official statistics faces challenges related to technological developments, budget cuts, and growing privacy concerns. At the same time, there is a need for shareable and scalable platforms to support comparable data, leading to several online data collection strategies being rolled out. Time Use Surveys (TUS) are particularly affected by these challenges and needs as they (while producing rich data) are complex, time- intensive studies (because they include multiple tasks and are administered at the household level). This article introduces the Modular Online Time Use…

Joeri MinnenRead more
20 June 2023

[New Article] The Representativeness of Online Time Use Surveys. Effects of Individual Time Use Patterns and Survey Design on the Timing of Survey Dropout.

Like other surveys, time use surveys are facing declining response rates. At the same time paper-and-pencil surveys are increasingly replaced by online surveys. Both the declining response rates and the shift to online research are expected to have an impact on the representativeness of survey data questioning whether they are still the most suitable instrument to obtain a reliable view on the organization of daily life. This contribution examines the representativeness of a self-administered online time use survey using Belgian data collected in 2013 and 2014. The design of the…

Joeri MinnenRead more
6 March 2023

hbits presents MOTUS at NTTS Conference using beer

On the satellite event of the Conference on New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics on March 6, a team from VUB, from Destatis, from Statbel, and from TOR-VUB spin-off hbits gave a workshop on using the MOTUS data collection platform back-office to conduct Time-Use Surveys and Household Budget Surveys. After a live demonstration, participants could experience with designing these surveys themselves. Innovate data collection processes The satellite event frames within EUROSTAT’s initiatives to innovate data collection processes. Innovation is in particular important for studies that face a high response burden,…

Joeri MinnenRead more
7 April 2022

TUS & HBS within the IESS agreement

The main responsibility of Eurostat is to provide reliable and comparable statistical information to the institutions of the European Union (EU). An important instrument to achieve this is through the promotion of – as far as possible – harmonised statistical methods across its member states. Within this view the European Statistical System (ESS) is gradually being built up. Whereas Member States are responsible for the collection of the data and the compiling of the statistics for National and EU knowledge building, it is the role of Eurostat to support the…

Joeri MinnenRead more
25 March 2022

Time and health: growing older healthily

Within the framework of the Sense of Life and Retirement workshop at Howest College in Bruges, Theun Pieter van Tienoven gave a guest lecture on healthy ageing. He stressed the importance of time research to measure (the consequences of) active participation of people over 65. Growing older goes hand in hand with changing or disappearing social roles. Parenthood changes when children leave home or have children themselves. At retirement, the social context of work largely disappears. The risk of social exclusion increases. Active participation, such as informal help, voluntary work…

Joeri MinnenRead more
4 January 2022

GeoService: Inclusion of geolocation data as tentative data to MOTUS

In a Time Use Survey (TUS) respondents are asked to keep a record of their activities in a time diary, usually for 2 days (one weekday, one weekend day). Besides the activities themselves, their context also plays an important role. In a TUS, the activity and its social and spatial dimension define an episode. If one of the elements changes, a new episode starts. TUS is a reliable method to capture micro-behavioural data on how people spend their time. People time spending is however determined by constraints which makes that…

Joeri MinnenRead more
7 October 2021

Federal planning bureau tests MOTUS in view of better mobility data

In 2017, the Federal Planning Bureau called for the creation of a Mobility Data Working Group. The objective of this working group is the collection and processing of mobility data, as well as the coordination of various policy levels and domains. Today, detailed and up-to-date information is needed for themes such as salary cars and the organisation of public transport. Answering current policy questions poses new challenges for policy officers. Both collecting new data is a necessity, but also understanding the underlying dynamics why people move around is necessary. Movements…

Joeri MinnenRead more
16 September 2021

Difference between Committed and Tentative data

With the new User Interface of MOTUS the concepts of Committed Data and Tentative Data became important. Committed Data are seen as data that are registered by the respondent as there is an active involvement. Eg. When a respondent keeps a Time Diary this means the registration of an activity and the answering of additional context questions. Tentative Data are data about or in relation to the respondent without his or her active involvement, ie. passively. The data is gathered via sensors available in a Smartphone or Wearable, but the…

Joeri MinnenRead more
16 June 2021

What is the GSBPM?

The GSBPM stands for the 'Generic Business Process Model' and is used both within and between statistical offices and is used to describe the statistics production in a general and process-oriented way. MOTUS has been inventoried on the GSBPM.

Joeri MinnenRead more

hbits - Home

Thoughts on the Smart Survey Implementation Project (SSI)

Digital Transformation of Time Use Surveys in Germany

WINWIN4WORKLIFE Consortium Meeting #2 – Bratislava

First results of the German time use study

WW4WL logo

[New Article] Calling it quits: a longitudinal study of factors associated with dropout among doctoral students.

Kick-off meeting WW4WL

Designing, creating, and conducting the International Association’s Time Use Survey (IATUS) through MOTUS

MOTUS moves to a more secure environment

[New Article] Answering Current Challenges of and Changes in Producing Official Time Use Statistics Using the Data Collection Platform MOTUS

[New Article] The Representativeness of Online Time Use Surveys. Effects of Individual Time Use Patterns and Survey Design on the Timing of Survey Dropout.

hbits presents MOTUS at NTTS Conference using beer

TUS & HBS within the IESS agreement

Time and health: growing older healthily

GeoService: Inclusion of geolocation data as tentative data to MOTUS

Federal planning bureau tests MOTUS in view of better mobility data

Difference between Committed and Tentative data

What is the GSBPM?

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