Technical Overview
of the HWF Survey

HWF Survey:  general | summary table
the Questionnaire:  general |sections: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

HWF Cross-Country Survey
general | summary table

General info

Whilst there is considerable information for Western European countries, the information for Eastern European countries is much poorer.  Data there have only recently been gathered in such a way as to permit international comparison and are even then are not always available to researchers.  Even in Western Europe, there are wide variations in what material is available for different countries.  For this reason, we have constructed a questionnaire for a representative sample survey of at least 1000 individuals in each country and this was carried out in Spring 2001.

The survey is based upon a randomly selected sample of people according to standard international conventions.  As we can see from the chart below, the response rate varied from between 20% and 93%, but in all cases this was apparently normal for  that country.  It was not possible to undertake face to face surveys in all countries, so in the Netherlands and Sweden, a telephone interview was carried out instead.

The surveys were conducted between February and June 2001 and its results shall be available at later stages of the project.

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Summary table

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The HWF Survey Questionnaire
general | sections: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

General info

The questionnaire is designed to cover the way in which the activities of different household members combine, including both paid and unpaid work, work in the formal and in the black or grey economy (a very important field in some countries).  It is also designed to look at attitudes to flexibility as well as behaviour.  For this reason, we have been concerned to look at all forms of work, including domestic work, child care, work in the informal economy, self provisioning and additional casual and occasional jobs in addition to various kinds of regular employment.  Each of these issues has very different connotations in the different parts of Europe.

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Section one: Individual respondents

The main respondent is the individual.  The first part of the questionnaire relates to the individual responses and in order to try to understand the combination of different types of economic activity, we have asked in some detail about various sources of income.  There are then some more detailed questions about the main economic activity, including the kinds of hours worked, places worked and working conditions.   There are some questions designed to elucidate not just under what conditions a person is working, but also the reasons for that particular set of conditions and whether it is chosen or forced upon them.  Finally, respondents are asked about how happy they are with these arrangements and if they would want to change them.   Similar, although less detailed questions, are asked about the second, third and fourth economic activity of the respondent.   The assumption is that the flexible work would more likely found in the second, third or fourth activity and that this might be combined with a more stable first activity.

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Section two: Households members

The second part of the questionnaire uses a series of grids to ask about other members of the household.  Here the information collected is less detailed, because it is collected from only one person in the household.  The composition of the household forms the topic of one grid.  The different kinds of work undertaken by different household members are the subject of the second grid.  The third grid looks at a variety of different domestic tasks and asks respondents which household member, or who outside of the household carries out these tasks.  The next grid considers voluntary and unpaid work for others outside of the household by different family members, with the intention to get some measure of social capital in different countries.  It is assumed that whereas formal social capital in the sense of contribution to voluntary organisations may be low in CECs, informal help for others might nevertheless be well developed.  The next grid attempts to look at how key household decisions are made and who has the most important decision making role in this respect.  Is it the key wage earner?  Or is it the most senior person on the household?  In this part of the questionnaire we should be able to explore the extent to which different contributions to the household may result in different balances of power within the household.

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Section three: Work values

The third section of the questionnaire is devoted to work values.  It considers the extent to which people are happy about their various economic activities and the extent to which these might impinge upon or help family life.  Finally, we try to look at sources of discord and tension in the area of work and household with particular respect to flexibility.  This part of the questionnaire should enable us to better understand the extent to which flexibility may be a help or a hindrance to the organisation of family life and the extent to which it may lead to conflict. 

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Section four: Potential for flexibility

The next section of the questionnaire considers the potential for flexibility, by asking under what conditions people would move house, move jobs or retrain.  Another table considers job changes since 1989 and this would be particularly relevant in CEC countries.  This would give some indication of how flexible the respondent was until now.

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Section five: Economic resources of households

The final questions in the questionnaire measure the economic resources of the household, including not only income but also other resources such as consumer goods, land and domestic animals owned, access to telecommunications and so on.  Again we have tried to take a rather comprehensive view of what is meant by household resources.

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