When I was a JW kid in the 1950s and 60s we covered all the territory maps at least 4 times a year - even the more rurual ones. We sometimes hit the same territories every 60 days. We knew most of the houses by heart and who lived there - knew whether they were going to be nice or nasty - and who had dogs we had to watch out for.
I live in a fairly dense and generally upscale (but not rich) neighborhood. I have lived here almost 7 years and only seen them at my door on three occasions. I usually have a Memorial tract and maybe a summer convention tract dropped on my doorstep without a knock. My office and desk sit less than 10 feet from the front door, so I would hear anyone coming to the front door. My puppy goes crazy when someone comes to the door (UPS delivery, Girl Scouts, Halloween candy thieves, etc.), but if the JWs are coming to my door she isn't noticing them. I've considered driving over to the KH on Saturday morning and then following them to the territories and the around while they are in service. I'd take my movie camera to see where they actually go and what they actually do. My guess is that it would make for some interesting video.
Of course in my case, I'm sure my house is marked as being the home of an apostate. But surely not everyone that works this territory knows that. At some point in time I would expect someone to actually do more than drop a tract on my front porch and actually knock on the door.
Many of the recent JWs who have left and contacted me on one of my websites have admitted that over the past few years they spent very little time in any kind of "real" Witnessing work (knocking on doors, standing on downtown street corners). Most admitted that they would go out and do their "routes," stopping by their "go backs" and dropping off new magazines, but not spending any time in preaching. Others would go and spend part of a morning putting magazines in laundromats and doctor's offices. Some would make cold calls on the telephone, but only leave messages - not actually talk to anyone who answered. A few would Witness by going on the Internet and leaving comments on Youtube videos and Yahoo! Answers or Topix threads.
This may vary from one area to another depending on how enthusiastic the elders are in actually engaging in field service themselves. But I know that many spend their "hours" at the Kingdom Halls engaging in "planning and service meetings." In fact, the elders may be more reluctant to actually go door to door than some of the R & F. They know that it's all just a waste of time - but they can disappear into other work (shepherding calls, judicial meetings, etc.) and spend more time kicking JWs out of the cult than recruiting new members into it.
One former elder confessed to me that over the past three or four years he may have spent 20 hours in actual door-to-door preaching. These guys count meeting times (good for at least 4 hours a week), talk preparation at home (another "4" hours a week), and "shepherding calls" - time spent calling up the other JWs and asking them if they've reported all their hours, asking them if they are well, and asking them if they have any questions about recent meeting or magazine discussions. There is also, of course, time spent working on RBC projects - one of the favorite ways to put in hours and still feel good about the time spent.
BTW - one elder recently wrote me and mentioned that in their Kingdom Hall they spent a lot of hours trying to get members to come back to meetings. In his KH there were 122 members (including children over the age of 4) - but meeting attendance was only about 65-70 on Sundays. So they would spend and count most of their hours spent on the phone calling other JWs who had recently missed a meeting. In my day those kinds of hours were not considered "service hours" by elders. He told me that the elders would make note of who failed to show up for a meeting and then hand off to each elder a list of those who missed meetings. They would then count 30 minutes to an hour per shepherding phone call. They would also call regular attenders to encourage them to contribute more to the contribution boxes and ask them to put in checks rather than cash so that the elders could keep track of each family's real contributions. He said that they would use the excuse that "checks were safer than cash" and that "checks gave the giver proof for tax returns." The real reason was two-fold: Give the elders a reason to count time and shame the JWs into giving larger amounts than they would with cash. As he said, "Who would write a check for $2 a week?"
Bottom line: probably 80-85% of all hours counted are bogus.
JV