Eurofound, The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
Woking life unit
04/07/2017
04/07/2017
The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) is based on face-to-face questionnaire administered to a multi-stage, stratified, random sample of employed population aged 15 or older. People were considered to be in employment at the time of the survey if they had worked for pay or profit for at least an hour in the week preceding the interview (ILO definition).
The aim of the EWCS is to provide an overview of the state of working conditions in the EU, to identify major issues and changes affecting the workplace and to contribute to a better monitoring of the quality of work and employment in Europe. The number of questions and issues covered in the EWCS has expanded in each subsequent survey, but a core set of key questions has remained unchanged in order to enable the study of trends in working conditions.
The questionnaire covered several aspects of working conditions, including physical environment, workplace design, working hours, work organisation, well-being, and social/colleague relationships in the workplace. It includes the following topics:
Further information about the series, including downloadable reports and other publications can also be found on EWCS webpages.
Unless stated otherwise, the indicators are expressed as percentages within (or share of) the population and breakdowns are given by sex and sometimes also other respondent characteristics.
The EWCS results are produced in accordance with the relevant international classification systems. The International standard classification of education (ISCED) is used to measure the educational attainment level.
The International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) is used to code data on occupation. To take into account revision of the ISCO classification, data on occupation are coded both in ISCO‐88 and ISCO‐08.
The Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community is used to code data on economic activity. To take into account the revision of the NACE categories data are coded both in NACE rev 1.1 and NACE Rev. 2.
For more details on the classification, please consult: Eurostat-Metadata (ISCED)
The EWCS covers all economic sectors.
Most of the indicators are expressed as percentages within (or share of) the population that chose a particular answer to each question. The breakdowns are given by sex and sometimes other respondent characteristics. Most of the concepts and definitions are straightforward and are clear from the name of the variable (that corresponds to a specific question in the EWCS).
Other concepts and definitions used (such as main job, employment sector, occupation, etc.) are standard and can be found in EU LFS.
Persons.
All persons aged 15 and over (16 and over in Spain, the UK and Norway, due to the minimum legal working age being higher in these countries) whose usual place of residence is in the territory of the countries included in the survey and who were in employment during the reference period.
The dataset covers the 28 EU Member States and seven further European countries – Norway, Switzerland, Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.
The coverage of the EWCS over the years reflects the evolution of the EU, as more states have joined over time.
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Unless stated otherwise, indicators are reported as percentages, or a share of population, that selected each answer category to a given question. In some cases, the mean and standard deviation of respondents’ answers are given (for example, the mean and standard deviation in the population of daily commuting time to work measured in minutes, the mean and standard deviation of usual weekly work hours in the population measured in hours, etc.).
The EWCS is designed as a continuous survey to be repeated every five years. The reference year indicates the year of a given survey wave. Some variables refer to the situation in the past 12 months or changes in the current situation compared to 5 years ago. These cases are clearly indicated in each variable name.
No legal acts are applicable.
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EWCS microdata do not contain any administrative information such as names or addresses that would allow direct identification. Anonymity is preserved in the aggregate data.
Survey conducted every five years since 1990. Survey datasets are made available no later than two years after fieldwork completion.
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It is Eurofound policy to make the questionnaires and datasets freely available to the public. Questionnaires are made available upon completion of the survey fieldwork. Survey datasets are made available no later than two years after fieldwork completion. Links to the questionnaires for earlier editions of the survey can be found on the pages for the specific survey waves:
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/about-eurofound-surveys/data-availability
The Eurofound datasets and accompanying materials are stored with the UK Data Service in Essex, UK and promoted online via their website. For access please see http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/.
Approximately at 5-year intervals
No regular news release.
There are no regular publications based on the EWCS. The list of existing publications can be found at Eurofound’s website: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications
The sixth European Working Conditions Survey – Overview report was published on 17 November 2016 and is available at Eurofound’s website: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2016/working-conditions/sixth-european-working-conditions-survey-overview-report
No online databases are available. Selected data tables for 2010 and 2015 wave can be found in data visualisation, survey mapping tool:
The Eurofound datasets and accompanying materials are stored with the UK Data Service in Essex, UK and promoted online via their website. For access please see http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/
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Information on methodology can be found at Eurofound’s website:
Information on all aspects of data quality is available in the Technical report
A unified methodological approach and a quality assurance system was developed in an effort to provide comparable and reliable data on working conditions across Europe. Each stage of the survey was carefully planned, closely monitored and documented, and specific controls were put in place building on recommendations outlined in the Quality assurance report of the fifth EWCS, the External quality assessment report of the fifth EWCS, as well as Eurofound’s experiences with previous waves of the EWCS and other surveys. Quality control mechanisms were applied to ensure quality in terms of relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, and coherence and comparability.
Each stage of the EWCS was documented in detail in order to promote transparency and to be able to draw lessons for future reference. The Quality control report, compiled by the contractor, provides a summary of the quality control activities performed before, during and after the fieldwork.
Eurofound contracted an independent third party to assess the survey quality in relation to comparable surveys and international standards, such as the quality criteria outlined in the European Statistical System, and to provide suggestions for improvement of future waves of the EWCS. The External data quality assessment concludes that the quality of the sixth EWCS is very high, compared to similar surveys and complies with international quality standards.
The main user needs are to provide results of high accuracy appropriate for policy making purposes at a European Level and to produce highly comparable data based on harmonised methodology across member states of the EU, candidate countries and other European countries.
The main instrument through which the Foundation receives users’ needs is through expert group meetings in which experts from various user organisations are providing comments and suggestions on the content and the design of the survey. These suggestions are taken into account in the survey design and the questionnaire drafting. Eurofound also measures user satisfaction by monitoring the number of citations of the EWCS data, the number of article cuttings and media reach regarding the survey, the number of downloads of statistics and related publications.
The geographical coverage of EWCS by year is explained above under 3.8.
The sample used in the EWCS is representative of those aged 15 years and over (16 and over in Bulgaria, Spain, the UK and Norway) who are in employment and are resident in the country that is being surveyed. The sample targeted the de facto population (all people in employment living in that country including guest workers, immigrants and refugees) and not de jure population (the citizens of that country alone). In each of the 35 countries, a multi-stage, stratified clustered sampling design was used.
The target number of interviews was 1,000 in all countries, with some exceptions:
For more information please see the Sampling Implementation Report.
The external Survey quality assessment report indicates that the sampling error is similar across EWCS waves and also similar other surveys using stratified multi-stage random sampling.
Non sampling errors cover:
Coverage errors
Under-coverage of the random route process is usually small although its actual extent was not measured. Most of it refers to institutionalised persons (e.g. prisoners) and/or those not having a place of residence (i.e. homeless, travellers etc.). The omission of the former group of persons is a design choice while the omission of the latter is a common feature of all area sample surveys. Bias introduced by coverage problems is alleviated to some extent by weighting which adjusts the distribution of the sample among main variables (age, gender, occupation, economic activity and region) according to a universe description (the EU-Labour Force Survey).
Measurement errors
Measurement errors occur during data collection and cause the recorded values of variables to be different than the true ones. They are distinguished in three types of errors: errors due to the questionnaire, the respondent or the interviewer. Measurement errors are alleviated when experienced, well-trained and not overworked field force is employed in the survey.
Processing errors
The coding procedure was thoroughly checked, and all problems were reported in a coding report. Ambiguities due to inadequate textual descriptions were resolved by re-contacting the respondents. Data entry error rate remained limited, and data entry was of high quality. Checks were performed for inconsistent and/or illogical values before and during data entry with the help of appropriate software so as to ensure that records not pose any apparent empirical contradictions.
Non response errors
The unit non-response arises from three reasons:
The difference in survey characteristics between respondents and non-respondents creates the non-response error. Nonresponse error can affect the quality of survey statistics. The response rate varied greatly across countries. The average response rate was 47% in 2005, 44% in 2010 and 43% in 2015.
For more information please see the Technical Report.
Findings based on the EQLS data are published on Eurofound website soon after its delivery and acceptance. In general first publications and reports are disseminated in the course of year N+1 (where N = year of data collection). Micro data for all countries are made available by the end of February N+2 at the latest.
Information on punctuality can be found in the Quality Control Report.
Harmonisation is a main priority in the EWCS and therefore the variables have been implemented in a harmonised way
based on a common master questionnaire and an elaborate process of translation ensuring semantic, conceptual and normative equivalence across all surveyed countries. In the 2015 survey computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) was used across all countries and all interviews.
The statistical population was persons in employment according to the ILO definition (having worked for pay or profit at least one hour in the week preceding the survey). Any special cases (students, apprentices etc.) were treated in exactly the same way as in the LFS using the LFS manual and contacts with Eurostat’s LFS team. The methodology used in the different stages of the survey process was quite harmonised.
Because of differences in individual’s willingness and availability to participate in the survey, certain groups are overrepresented – and others underrepresented – in the EWCS sample. To ensure that the results accurately reflect the population of workers in each country, post-stratification weighting is needed. The design weights are calibrated by comparing the EWCS with Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey with regard to respondents’ gender, age, region, occupation and sector of economic activity.
The differences between countries in the size of their workforce are not (fully) reflected in the sample size in each country. To ensure that larger countries weigh heavier in the EU-level results, supranational weights need to be applied when performing analyses on the European level.
For more information please see the Quality Control Report.
A number of methodological differences mainly due to the effort to improve other aspects of quality of the survey (e.g. relevance and accuracy) have been implemented that might have affected the comparability of EWCS data over time. In terms of the sampling method (at least in theory) there should be no systematic difference between the results of the waves. The data were collected in different months, which might have affected comparability, depending on the seasonality of the variables used in the analysis.
A large part of the EWCS questionnaire is considered as trend-questions and generally remains unchanged over time in order to facilitate comparisons. However, in a few cases minor improvements were introduced to improve the relevance or the accuracy of results and some new questions were added.
For more information, see original questionnaires and quality reports on Eurofound website:
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/european-working-conditions-surveys
The overlap between EWCS and LFS is small and includes (besides the variables already used in weighting) four variables: employment status, working hours, part-time work and temporary employment. Most of the differences between the two surveys are small. Greater inconsistencies seem to be driven primarily by differences in concepts or employment status classification.
For more information please see the Quality Control Report.
The estimates based on EWCS data for a given reference period have full internal coherence, as they are based on the compatible microdata and they are calculated using the same estimation methods.
All interviews were made face-to-face at the respondent’s home. In the 2015 survey computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) was used across all countries and all interviews. The average length of the interview varies across countries from 20 to 120 minutes.
Revisions to data are infrequent since variables are being edited and corrected based on set of logical edits at data entry stage.
There is no fixed revision schedule.
EWCS data is survey data. In each wave a random sample of workers (employees and self-employed) has been interviewed face-to-face.
Approximately at 5-year intervals
The contractor conducting the interviews on behalf of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) changes over time.
The interviews are carried out face-to-face. In 2010, in 12 countries a CAPI (Computer Aided Personal Interviewing) data collection technique was used; elsewhere, national agencies implemented the study with pen-and-paper questionnaires (PAPI). In the 2015 survey computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) was used across all countries and all interviews.
The data editing procedure involves logical screening and code validating embedded in the data collection and data entry, checking for extreme values (outliers) in the continuous variables, qualitative editing, cross-country comparisons for coding consistency and pattern validation and over time comparisons for previously asked questions in order to check coding consistency. Cross country comparisons included the examination of frequency distributions of different countries which may reveal coding problems like reversed scales.
For information on sampling design and weighing please see Sampling Implementation Report and Weighting report.
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