While digital technology use and skills have typically been measured with surveys, digital behavioral data that are passively collected from individuals’ digital devices have recently emerged as an alternative method of measuring technology usage patterns in a more unobtrusive and detailed way. In this paper, we evaluate how passively collected smartphone usage data compare to self-reported measures of smartphone use, considering the three usage dimensions amount of use, variety of use, and activities of use. Based on a sample of smartphone users in Germany who completed a survey and had a tracking app installed on their smartphone, we find that the alignment between the survey and digital behavioral data varies by dimension of smartphone use. Whereas amount of use is considerably overreported in the survey data, variety of use aligns more closely across the two data sources. For activities of use, the alignment differs by type of activity. The results also show that the alignment between survey and digital behavioral data is systematically related to individuals’ sociodemographic characteristics, including age, gender, and educational attainment. Finally, latent class analyses conducted separately for the survey and digital behavioral data suggest similar typologies of smartphone use, although the overlap between the typologies on the individual level is rather small.

中文翻译：

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衡量智能手机使用情况：调查与数字行为数据

虽然数字技术的使用和技能通常是通过调查来衡量的，但从个人数字设备被动收集的数字行为数据最近已成为以更不引人注目和更详细的方式衡量技术使用模式的替代方法。在本文中，我们考虑了使用量、使用种类和使用活动这三个使用维度，评估了被动收集的智能手机使用数据与自我报告的智能手机使用测量数据的比较。根据完成调查并在智能手机上安装跟踪应用程序的德国智能手机用户样本，我们发现调查与数字行为数据之间的一致性因智能手机使用维度的不同而异。尽管调查数据中的使用量被大大高估，但两个数据源的使用多样性更加一致。对于使用活动，对齐方式因活动类型而异。结果还表明，调查和数字行为数据之间的一致性与个人的社会人口特征（包括年龄、性别和教育程度）系统相关。最后，针对调查和数字行为数据单独进行的潜在类别分析表明智能手机使用的类型相似，尽管个人层面上的类型之间的重叠相当小。