Comparing graduate occupational therapy students’ perceived time use, temporality, and tempo of occupational participation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study of time use, habits, routines, and rituals is significant to occupational science inquiry, with established research techniques and numerous published reports documenting the temporal nature of human occupational behavior. Occupational therapy graduate students are therefore instructed on time use analysis methods. In a large public American university graduate program, self-evaluation of time use is used as a learning strategy, providing students rich opportunities to apply what they learn in class to gain a better understanding of their own lives. Following didactic instruction, the students in an introductory theory course were asked to document and reflect upon their time use on a recent day or week in spring 2019. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a statewide stay-at-home order and widespread school closures, including the conversion of all coursework to alternative online methods. In this context, the students in the following cohort completed the time use documentation and reflection assignment in spring 2020. The data from these assignments provide a unique opportunity to compare time use in the midst of a global pandemic to time use in the prior year. Anonymous data were compared between graduate student cohorts from the spring 2020 semester (n = 59) and spring 2019 (n = 58). Data were compiled and analyzed using NVivo software for qualitative analysis, and SPSS software for quantitative investigation. Results indicate that students attempted to self-organize their time with an emphasis on maintaining or correcting perceived shifts in temporarily and tempo. Students cited concern for their health and reported adjusting patterns of occupational engagement in studying, sleep, rest, and community mobility. Future research should query students’ motivations and feelings related to time use and perception of time.