Roxburgh, Rachel, Hughes, Julie, Milgate, Wendy · The British journal of occupational therapy · 2024 · DOI
This Australian study looked at how nine people with ME/CFS spend their time each day using a special diary tool. Researchers found that participants spent about 58% of their waking time on leisure and relaxation activities, and their symptoms didn't seem to change much throughout the day. The study suggests that using time diaries could help occupational therapists (specialists who help people manage daily activities) understand better how ME/CFS affects what patients can do, and design better support strategies.
Understanding how people with ME/CFS actually spend their time is crucial for developing occupational therapy interventions that are realistic and tailored to patient needs. This study is one of few examining occupational therapy approaches specifically in Australia and provides a practical tool that could help clinicians better assess and support functional capacity in ME/CFS patients. Validated time-use assessment methods could improve quality of life by helping patients and healthcare providers identify sustainable activity patterns.
This study does not establish that the NIHAR is definitively superior to other time-tracking methods, nor does it prove that occupational therapy interventions based on time-diary data will improve patient outcomes. The absence of statistically significant symptom fluctuation throughout the day does not mean symptoms are stable—the short observation window and small sample may have missed important variations. The study cannot determine causation or mechanisms linking activity patterns to symptom severity.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Roxburgh, Rachel, Hughes, Julie, & Milgate, Wendy (2024). Using time diaries to inform occupational therapy practice for people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: An exploratory study.. The British journal of occupational therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177/03080226241249279
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-roxburgh-2024-using-time,
author = {Roxburgh, Rachel and Hughes, Julie and Milgate, Wendy},
title = {Using time diaries to inform occupational therapy practice for people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: An exploratory study.},
journal = {The British journal of occupational therapy},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1177/03080226241249279},
note = {PubMed: 40337282},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/roxburgh-2024-using-time},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/roxburgh-2024-using-time
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