Time management/Questionnaires

One indicator of the increase in interest in time management is the emergence of self-report instruments designed to measure the amount of respondent use of time management skills and behaviours (Mudrack, 1997).

Questionnaires
Several self-report instruments have been designed in order to measure the different aspects of individual human time management.

Three questionnaires have been most used:
 * 1) the four or three-factor Time Management Behavior Scale (TMBS: Macan, Shahani, Dipboye and Phillips, 1990)
 * 2) the five-factor Time Structure Questionnaire (TSQ: Bond & Feather, 1988)
 * 3) the three or two-factor Time Management Questionnaire (TMQ: Britton & Tesser, 1991).

Also of interest may be:
 * 1) Adolescence Time Management Disposition Inventory (Xiting & Zhijie, 2001)
 * 2) Time Management for Exercise Scale (Hellsten & Rogers, 2009)
 * 3) University Student Satisfaction and Time Management Scale (Neill, 2016)

Time Management Behavior Scale
The Time Management Behaviour Scale (TMBS) was developed by Macan, Shahani, Dipboye & Phillips (1990). The TMBS identified and described factors within time management, such as establishing objectives, prioritizing for tasks, setting goals, perceived time control (Garcia-Ros, Perez-Gonzalez & Hinojosa, 2004).

The TMBS originally had 33 items and four factors: goals and priorities; mechanics; preference for organisation, and perceived control of time. The four factor structure of the TMBS has been confirmed by Adams and Jex (1997) via confirmatory factor analysis.

Esters and Castellanos (1998) found the TMBS predicted university student stress.

Time Structure Questionnaire
The Time Structure Questionnaire (TSQ) was developed by Bond and Feather (1988).

Time Structure Questionnaire (pdf)

Time Management Questionnaire
The Time Management Questionnaire (TMQ) was developed by Britton and Tesser (1991).

The TMQ contains items on attitudes and planning. Three factors accounted for 36 percent of variance: short-range planning; long-range planning, and attitudes. Two factors were retained in subsequent studies (Barling, Kelloway & Cheung, 1996; Trueman & Hartley, 1996).

The items can be found in the article by Britton and Tesser (1991): (see Table 1)

University Student Satisfaction and Time Management Questionnaire
The University Student Satisfaction and Time Management Questionnaire was developed at the University of Canberra.

Future development
The average number of factors in the reviewed time management instruments is four. Internal consistencies range from 0.5 to 0.9 (Claessens et al., 2005). No one instrument is ideal, and they can all be improved.