Bluefir/hetus-time-use

Dataset Card: HETUS Time Use (Converted from Eurostat TSV)

Dataset Summary

This dataset contains normalized tabular observations converted from Eurostat HETUS TSV files, plus flattened SDMX ESMS metadata.

The conversion is performed by db-hf-normalization.py and preserves raw TSV tokens to prevent information loss during normalization.

Source Data

• Original source: Eurostat HETUS database exports (TSV + SDMX XML metadata)
• Local source folder: hetus/
• Waves currently included: 2000_2010, 2020

Conversion Method

The converter:

1. Reads TSV files as tab-separated raw text (no NA auto-coercion).
2. Expands packed dimension keys from the first column.
3. Melts year/time columns into long format.
4. Preserves exact raw source tokens for auditability:
   • source_key_raw
   • time_period_raw
   • observation_cell_raw
5. Creates normalized fields for analysis:
   • time_period, time_period_year
   • observation, observation_value, duration_minutes, status_flag
6. Validates strict lossless mapping per file (1:1 source cell preservation).

Splits

observations

Long-format observations.

Core provenance fields:

• dataset_id
• wave
• source_file
• metadata_file
• source_row_index
• source_key_raw
• time_period_raw
• observation_cell_raw

Normalized fields:

• time_period
• time_period_year
• observation_raw
• observation
• observation_value
• duration_minutes
• status_flag
• is_missing

Dimension fields (vary by source table, unioned into one schema):

• Examples: freq, unit, sex, age, geo, acl00, acl18, ...

files

Per-source-file conversion and validation report:

• rows_wide
• rows_long
• rows_expected_long
• lossless_validated
• dimensions/time-period summaries

metadata

Flattened SDMX ESMS metadata attributes with:

• attribute id/path
• HTML value (value_html)
• plain-text value (value_text)

Data Loss / Integrity Statement

For each TSV file, conversion enforces:

• Exact row cardinality: rows_long == rows_wide * number_of_time_period_columns
• Exact cell-level preservation of raw source tuples: (source_row_index, source_key_raw, time_period_raw, observation_cell_raw)

If any mismatch is detected, conversion fails for that file.

Known Caveats

• The first TSV column stores packed dimensions separated by commas. The converter keeps both:
  • raw packed key (source_key_raw)
  • expanded normalized dimensions
• Whitespace around values may be normalized in analytical columns, but the raw fields remain preserved.

Intended Uses

• Comparative time-use analysis across countries, years, demographic strata, and activity codes.
• Reproducible ETL pipelines where raw-source lineage is required.

Out-of-Scope Uses

• Any individual-level inference (dataset is aggregate tabular statistics).

Citation

Please cite Eurostat HETUS and include repository/version information for this converted dataset.

Dataset Version

• Converter script: db-hf-normalization.py
• Conversion date: {{YYYY-MM-DD}}
• Repository commit: {{GIT_COMMIT_SHA}}