Remote working and experiential wellbeing: A latent lifestyle perspective using UK time use survey before and during COVID-19

  1. Jerry Chen
  2. Li Wan

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Abstract

Mental health in the UK had deteriorated compared with pre-pandemic trends. Existing studies on heterogenous wellbeing changes associated COVID-19 tend to segment population based on isolated socio-economic and demographic indicators, notably gender, income and ethnicity, while a more holistic and contextual understanding of such heterogeneity among the workforce seems lacking. This study addresses this gap by 1) combining UK time use surveys collected before and during COVID-19, 2) identifying latent lifestyles within three working mode groups (commuter, homeworker and hybrid worker) using latent class model, and 3) quantifying nuanced experiential wellbeing (ExWB) changes across workers of distinct lifestyles. The direction and magnitude of ExWB changes were not uniform across activity types, time of day, and lifestyles. The direction of ExWB change during the daytime activities window varied in accordance with lifestyle classifications. Specifically, ExWB decreased for all homeworkers but increased significantly for certain hybrid workers. Magnitude of ExWB change correlated strongly with lifestyle. To understand the significant heterogeneity in ExWB outcomes, a spatial-temporal conceptualisation of working flexibility is developed to explicate the strong yet complex correlations between wellbeing and lifestyles. The implications to post-pandemic “back-to-work” policies are 1) continued expansion of hybrid working optionality, 2) provide wider support for lifestyle adaptation and transitions.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0305096
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.04.27.22273297v2 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.27.22273297: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and weaknesses of the study: The main strength of the study is our novel time use approach, allowing us to identify latent but distinct lifestyles within working modes. Our research is timely and provides insights from the SWB perspective when the future of work is rapidly changing. The richness of the multi-wave time use data allows us to visualise intraday patterns in an interpretable way, and reveal distinguishable differences between working modes, between lifestyles, before and during the pandemic. The proposed method for identifying latent lifestyles provides a viable strategy for tackling the high dimensionality issue associated with time use data. A key limitation of the study is the measurement issue of SWB. As per the original data, each activity episode had a single SWB variable. The measurement weakness is twofold: firstly, we had to transform the ordinal results into a binary SWB outcome, increasing interpretability but trading off some sensitivity; secondly, the relationship between instantaneous utility and the long-term SWB is not yet clear. A more comprehensive set of SWB questions are required to better understand the impact mechanisms of time use on wellbeing. A supplemental questionnaire on long-term mental wellbeing of the respondents will allow future studies to understand the long-term mental health implications based on lifestyle differences. Furthermore, the data from the UKTUS are population-representative but nevertheless cross-sectional. ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  4. Version published to 10.1101/2022.04.27.22273297v1 on medRxiv