Self-completion variables

Note: there are two different versions of self-completion questionnaires for employees, which are referred to as Employees A and Employees B.

NAME EMPLOYEES A EMPLOYEES B UNEMPLOYED RETURNERS

QlA-QIJ EARNLIV NEWTECH WAYROUND GDRELS GDCONTS COMMWELL LEADER USEABIL UDECIDEl UDECIDE2 UDECIDE3 UDECIDE4 FAIRPAY 1 FAIRPAY2 FAIRPAY3 FAIRPAY4 PAIDHOLS DAYSHOL CLOCKIN FEELBADl-4 MISTAKEl-3 STRESS1 STRESS2 GRADES 1-4 WELLWORK MUCHWORK EFFICl EFFIC2 EFFIC3 LATE SICK ILLNESS WKTIMES CONTROL CHOICE FAMPREV1-4 DIEFSKIL LOWSKIL WORSECON

Q1 a-j Q2 a Q2 b Q3 a Q3 b Q3 c Q3 d Q3 e Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q1 1 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 a-d Q17 a-c Q18 a Q18 b Q19 a-d Q20 Q2 1 Q22 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q'2 7

Ql a-j Q1 a-j Q1 a-j

Q4 a-d Q18 a-d Q5 a-c Q6 a 819 a Q6 b Q19 b 87 a-d Q8 Q22 Q9 Q23 QlO Q1 1 Q12 Q13 Q20 Q14 Q15 Q8 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 a-d Q20 a Q20 b Q20 c

NIGHTWK WKENDWK LESSPAY MOVEAREA FAMPROB1-3 HOMEWK MEETRELS MEETFRDS FRDSUNEM FRDSEM HELPDEP HELPJOB HELPBILL WORRYMON Q28 LEISURE Q29 a SOCIAL Q29 b FAMILY Q29 c WORTHWH Q29 d FEEL-A-FEEL-L Q30 a-1 INCOMEA-INCOME-F LINEMBEN INCSUPP SICKBEN BENENUF PTNRVIEW PLEAVE PLOOK PNOTLOOK VIEWS-A-VIEW-H PARENTS1 Q31 PARENTS2 Q32 PARENTS3 Q33 a PARENTS4 Q33 b PARENTS5 Q34 PARENTS6 Q35 DONEWELL EXTRAEFF WKHARD-A-WKHARD-D

Q2O d Q20 e Q20 f Q20 g Q21 a-c 822 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q26 Q27 a Q27 b Q27 c 828 Q29 a Q29 b Q29 c Q29 d Q30 a-1

Q7 Q2 a Q2 b Q2 c Q2 d 83 a-1 Q4 a-f Q5 a Q5 b Q5 c Q6 Q9 Q10 a Q10 b Q10 c Qll a-h Q12 Q13 Q14 a Q14 b Q15 Q16 '217 Q2 1 Q24 a-d

Q4 a Q4 b Q4 c Q5 Q8 Q9 a Q9 b Q9 c Q10 a-h Qll Ql2 Q13 a Q13 b Q14 Q15 '216

TECHNICAL APPENDIX

This appendix provides supplementary information about some of the main technical aspects of the ques t io~ai re development, sample construction, fieldwork, and data ana- lysis for the Employment in Britain Survey of employees.

THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE EMPLOYED

The interview for employed people can be visualized as in three parts:

(i) The work history, with which the interview commenced, and which tmk an average of fifteen minutes to complete.

(ii) The main interview covering current and recent experience of work: this also concluded with questions about socio-economic characteristics of the individual and of the household. The average time for the main interview was about one hour.

(iii) A self-completion questionnaire, completed by the respondent (without intervention by the interviewer). This contained item scales suitable for self-completion, as well as some items which were of a relatively sensitive or personal nature. This took on average about ten minutes to complete.

To permit more ground to be covered within the cost and time constraints of the study. it was decided that some questions would be administered to only half the sample. This was achieved th~ough the self-completion module, which for the main survey was pre- pared in two versions with paNy differing content. The use of the two versions was alternated by each interviewer. The interviewer asked the respondent to answer the self- completion questionnaire on completion of the main interview. All but 3 per cent of respondents returned usable self-completion interviews.

There were two chief principles guiding the construction of the questionnaire. The first was relevance for testing theories and predictions about changes in the employment relationship. The links between these and questionnaire measures have been discussed in the various chapters. The second principle was comparab'iity with other research: the aim was to contribute to the assessment of changes over time and cross-national differences.

Four main British sources were identified. These were the Women in Employment Sur- vey of 1980, conducted by the Department of Employment and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (Martin and Roberts 1984); the 1984 Survey of Class in Modem Britain (CMB) conducted by the University of Essex (Marshall ef al. 1988); the 1986 Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI) of the Economic and Social Research Council; and the British Social Attitudes Survey of 1989 (BSA89) (Jowell eta/. 1990). The 1980, 1984, and 1989 surveys were comparable with the Employment in Britain Survey, in being based on nationally representative samples, although the 1980 survey did not collect data on men. The 1986 survey was not based on a nationally represent- ative sample (it covered six travel-to-work areas around large towns or cities), but bad a similar sample size and yielded a social class distribution which closely matched the national profile.

318 Technical Appendix

Occupation and Class

An important aspect of the design of the interview schedule was the inclusion of a life- long retrospective work history. The potential of this was first shown in the Women in Employment Survey and it was also adopted (in a different format) in the SCELI Survey. h e present survey uses a somewhat simplified version of the procedure used in SCELI, and covered all changes of employment status since initial entry to the labour market, except those which lasted for less than one month.

The extensive occupational data collected was coded to the Registrar-General's Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 1990. It was then converted, using a pro- gramme developed by Ken Randy. University of Cambridge, and Peter Elias, Univer- sity of Wanvick, into 'Goldthorpe Classes' (otherwise known as EGP classes). The class schema aims to differentiate positions in terms of their employment relations (for details, see Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992: 35-47). The details of the mapping of occupational unit groups into classes is given in Goldthorpe and Heath (1992). It is the only class schema to date which has serious evidence for its criterion validity (Evans 1992, 1996). In the text, we sometimes use it as aproxy for broad skill levels. It should be noted that this is not part of the interpretation of the schema by its authors, but reflects our own empir- ical finding that it predicts very well a range of skill measures (indeed, substantially better than the Registrar-General's classes, which are stated to represent skill groupings).

For presentational purposes, the class schema is used here in an aggregated fom. Since the study focuses on the employed only, classes IVa, IVb, and IVc are excluded. The collapsed schema that we have adopted is as follows:

Class labels in text Goldthorpe classes Professionallmanagerial I + 11 Lower non-manual m a Tehnician/supervisory V SkiUed manual VI Semi- and non-skilled IIIb + VIIa +VUb

The labels attached to the classes are our own. Professionallmanageriat, for instance, is referred to by the authors of the schema as the 'service class'. It should be noted that. in the schema used, routine non-manual employees (mb sales and services) are placed with the non-skilled, as recommended by Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992: 44).

Other Measures

With respect to particular measures, our measure of psychological well-being (or its con- verse, psychological distress) is taken fmm one of the most widely used and best validated measures: the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg 1972). A number of items were used in the 1986 SCELI survey as well as in several studies of unemployed samples. The twelve-item version of this scale was used here. The measure of work-related strain was a four-item scale developed by Wan (1990).

Occasional items were taken from other nationally comparable sources. A single item measuring the concept of non-financial employment commitment was based on the version used by the MRCESRC Social and Applied Psychology Unit, University of Sheffield, in a number of large-scale inquiries (Wart 1982; Jackson et al. 1983). Another item, measuring the receipt of vocational education and training, was taken from the 1986

Technical Appendix 319

Trainiig in Britain Survey (Rigg 1989). From the French national survey Etude des Conditions de Vie 1986-7, several items were taken concerning work with automation and computers, and physical working conditions. Wider comparisons concerning phys- ical working conditions were made possible by inclusion of a series of items from the 1991-2 European Survey of the Working Environment by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.

The nearest previous parallel to the present inquky, in terms of the breadth of informa- tion collected, although not the aims, was perhaps the Quality of Working Life surveys conducted in the USA during the 1970s ( Q u i i and Staines 1979). Unfortunately, the items used in these American surveys were not replicated in Britain in the same period, also, the surveys were discontinued in the USA after 1980. Nonetheless, items from the Quality of Working Life Surveys were sometimes adopted for topics where there was no comparable British source.

The concept of organizational commitment was one where comparative national in- formation for Britain would have been particularly valuable, but proved non-existent. A set of eight items used in the work module of the American General Social Survey (GSS) of 1991 was adopted here. These items in turn were drawn from the longer Organiza- tional Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) of Mowday (see Mowday et al. 1982).

Two of the most widely used motivational concepts are those of the 'work ethic' (Atieh et a/. 1987; Fumham 1987) and the 'locus of control' (Rotter 1966). The seven-item Australian Work Ethic Scale (Ho and Lloyd 1984) and Spector's (1988) sixteen-item Work Locus of Control Scale were each shortened to five items. It should be recog- nized, of course, that the shortening of scales may detract from the richness or com- plexity of the original concepts.

SAMPLE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

The Employed Sample

The sampling h e for the survey of employed people was the Postal Address File (PAF). This is a computerized database of all the addresses (but without names of residents) currently recognized by the Post Office. It has become the most commonly used sample frame for social surveys, replacing the Electoral Register. The advantage of PAF is that the addresses are continuously updated. A sample drawn from the PAF is likely to be very little affected by mobility, and also avoids the bias which, in the case of the Electoral Register, may result from non-registration.

The sample was derived by a commonly used multi-stage procedure. First 150 postal sectors were drawn by stratified random sampling, with probability proportional to the number of addresses in the sector. The decision to take 150 primary sampling units was based on experience, and is generally considered to be adequate to generate a nation- ally representative sample for Britain. A postal sector is roughly similar in size to a ward, with an average of 2,500 households per sector. The stratification procedure was car- ried out by CACl Inc., making use of population statistics held on their database, and applying as stratification factors geographical region, population density, and social class composition.

A practical advantage in selecting the primary sampling units with probability pro- portional to size is that an equal probability sample is then derived by having the same

320 Technical Appendix

number of interviews in each primary sampling unit (Moser and Kalton 1971). A ran. dom sample of sixty addresses was drawn within each selected postal sector, in to obtain thirty-six addresses with eligible members, and, with an assumed 70 per cent response rate, the desired twenty-five interviews per sector.

The final stage in the construction of the employed sample was doorstep screening and selection. Eligible individuals were those at the preselected addresses who were aged 20-60 (mclusive) and in employment. Self-employed people, people on temporarysick leave, and women on maternity leave, were counted as employed. If only one penon was eligible at the address, an interview was sought with that person. If more than one person was eligible, the person to be asked for an interview was selected by means of a Kish Grid (Kisb 1949; Moser and Kalton 1971).

WEIGHTING OF THE EMPLOYED SAMPLE

The chief reason for reweighting the employed sample results from the fact that only one person is interviewed at each address with eligible people. To correct for this, the number of eligible people at the address was recorded for each individual interviewed, and this (adjusted so as not to inflate the total sample size) was used as the primary weighting factor.

The distribution of the employed sample was compared with data from the Labour Force Survey in terms of age, gender, and social class. The only appreciable bias in the sample concerned gender, where there was an overrepresentation of women. Accordingly, a second weighting factor was introduced, down-weighting women and up-weighting men to match the proportions found in the April 1992 Labow Force Survey, while holding sample size constant.

The Unemployed Sample

The issues concerning the construction and weighting of the unemployed sample were particularly complex. Here only an outline description, focusing on principles rather than details, is provided.

For reasons of cost, it was necessary to sample and interview unemployed people in the same areas (that is, the same postal sectors) k the employed sample:The sample was eenerated on the comnuters of the National Unemnlovment Benefit Svstem (NUBS) in Latched areas. ~ ~ ~ s ' r e c o r d , virtuky all unemplo;edd,peoPle who d r a i benef;t or obtain National Insurance credits by virtue of unemployed status. This was a simple random sample from each area, of those aged 20-60 and with at least three months of current unemployment. To meet the requirements of confidentiality, all those listed were given an opportunity by the Employment Service to withdraw their names from the sample before it was issued.

It should be noted that, in the interval between sampling and interview, a proportion of the unemployed sample had ceased to be unemployed. Some were in jobs, others had become economically inactive. These, however, were not excluded from the survey. This was a sample of unemployed people at the time of sampling, not at the point of interview.

Reweighting was necessary for the unemployed sample because the primary sampling units had been selected with probability proportional to size (number of addresses), which is a good proxy for employment but a relatively poor proxy for unemployment. The

Technical Appendix

method of reweighting was based on Moser and Kalton (1971: 114-15) and implemented with the aid of tables, produced by the Employment Service, showing the actual num- bers unemployed in each area at the time of sampling, and tables of the numbers of addresses in each primary sampling unit.

1 THE FIELDWORK

e success of any survey depends c~ucially on the care and the expertise with which s carried out in the field. This task was performed by Public Attitude Surveys (PAS)

esearch Limited. Development of the questionnaires involved several stages including: (a) two pre-tests,

ing of a total of 120 interviews, ninety-one with employees and twenty-nine with loyed people; these involved a number of experiments with subsamples; and (b) survey of 150 interviews, 100 with employees and fifty with unemployed people.

The main fieldwork was preceded by whole-day briefing meetings for the interviewers. ere were ten such briefings, held in April-May 1992. Interviewers were provided with instruction pack prior to the briefings, and were required to complete examples on

sample selection and work-history recording before attending the briefing. The briefings were led by the directing staff of PAS, to a plan agreed with the authors of the survey. Particular attention was paid to instructing the interviewers in the rules for sampling, and the use of the Kish Grid; and to practising the more complex parts of the question- naire, notably the completion of the work-history section. Stress was also laid on the correct procedure to follow for administering the self-completion questionnaire. At least one of the authors was present at each briefing.

Interviewing commenced immediately after the briefings, and continued during the period late April to August 1992. AU interviewers had assignmenu including both employed and unemployed samples, and the samples (employed and unemployed) were interviewed in parallel.

Details of the response rates, and of the sources of sample amition, are shown in Table A.1. The overall net response rate (that is, excluding non-eligible or otherwise

TABLE A.1 Response lo the surveys

(a) Employed somple

Sample issued Nobody aged 20-60 Nobody employed Non-residential property Non-existent address Empty/demolished Total eligible sample Refused No contact (4+ calls) Other non-interview Total interviews

(b) Unemployed sample

10,332 Sample issued 1,720 2,725 Unusable address or not 1,149 know at address 303

387 Total eligible sample 1.417 (100%) 182 Refusedno contact 414 480

5,409 (100%) 939 556 45

3.869 (72%) Total interviews 1.003 (71%)

Technical Appendix

TABLE A.2 Regional distribution of response rores (cell 96)

Employed Unemployed

Scotland North North-West Yorks and Humberside West Midlands East Midlands East Anglia South-West Wales Greater London Rest of South-East

non-valid sample) was 72 per cent in the case of the employed sample, and 71 per cent in the case of the unemployed sample. Regional variations in the response rates are shown in Table A.2; the main outlier is the low unemployed response rate in Greater London, which has also been commonly encountered in other surveys.

ANALYSIS METHODS

A wide range of analysis methods, often involving multivariate statistical methods, have been drawn upon in preparing this book. It is not possible, in this appendix, to provide a detailed explanation of all these methods. Rather, the aim is to provide an outline of our approach. This is in two sections, the first a short discussion of some scoring and scal- ing methods used to summarize and group the questionnaire responses, while the second concerns the multivariate statistical methods which have been applied. The statistical section is prefaced by some explanation of the causal language and inferences involved in the analysis, and a postscript offers some guidance on how the statistical results in the text should be read and interpreted.

Summarizing and Grouping Questionnaire Items

An extensive interview survey generates a great volume of information, and this poses considerable problems of data reduction and summarization. The chapters contain many references to scores or indices obtained by combining information from two or more items in the questiomaire. It is known that a score or scale based on several correlated items provides more reliable information than any of the component items. The power of explanation may, in Nrn, be improved through the use of composite measures of improved reliability, as has been demonstrated through research on the links between attitudes, personality, and behaviour (Ajzen 1988).

The design of the survey questionnaire was influenced by these considerations. The aim was generally to represent the important topics or aspects not merely by a single

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