Incentives in surveys

This FORS guide discusses the effect of incentives on survey completion/response rate, sample composition, and response quality. The guide particularly emphasizes the effects of different types of incentives – conditional vs. unconditional, monetary vs. non-monetary – for encouraging survey participation and reducing panel survey attrition in the Swiss context

How to survey displaced workers in Switzerland ? Sources of bias and ways around them

Studying career outcomes after job loss is challenging because individually displaced worker form a self-selected group. Indeed, the same factors causing the workers to lose their jobs, such as lack of motivation, may also reduce their re-employment prospects. Using data from plant closures where all workers were displaced irrespective of their individual characteristics offers a way around this selection bias. There is no systematic data collection on workers displaced by plant closure in Switzerland. Accordingly, we conducted our own survey on 1200 manufacturing workers who had lost their job 2 years earlier. The analysis of observational data gives rise to a set of methodological challenges, in particular nonresponse bias. Our survey addressed this issue by mixing data collection modes and repeating contact attempts. In addition, we combined the survey data with data from the public unemployment register to examine the extent of nonresponse bias. Our analysis suggests that some of our adjustments helped to reduce bias. Repeated contact attempts increased the response rate, but did not reduce nonresponse bias. In contrast, using telephone interviews in addition to paper questionnaires helped to substantially improve the participation of typically underrepresented subgroups. However, the survey respondents still differ from nonrespondents in terms of age, education and occupation. Interestingly, these differences have no significant impact on the substantial conclusion about displaced workers' re-employment prospects

La flexibilité du temps de travail: entre autonomie et contraintes. Une étude de cas en Suisse.

Flexitime : between autonomy and constraints. A case study in SwitzerlandBy looking at how a new regulation is translated into everyday practices, this dissertation explores through a specific case study the degree of autonomy gained by wage-earners with the introduction of flexible working schedules. The guiding hypothesis is that by introducing procedural rules, flexitime opens the space for more daily negotiations, therefore reinforcing the effects of power relations inherent to employment relationships. The goal is to understand, through a sociological approach, how employees experience a form of working time that transfers responsibility for time management to them, and howthey integrate work-related constraints with their life outside the workplace. The first part of the dissertation sets up the context of the case study. It offers a definition of flexibility by situating it in the broader history of work time, as well as in relation to various organizational forms and cultural transformations. An international literature review and a focus on the Swiss case are offered. In the second part, the focus is narrowed to a specificSwiss firm specialized in mail-order, where a system of individualized management of annual work time has been introduced. By combining a quantitative and qualitative approach, it is possible to analyze determinants of the practices internal to the firm anddeterminants related to employees themselves, as well as the way in which employees articulate these two orders of constraints. The results show that the implementation of flexible working time is not affecting daily negotiation practices so much as it is creating a set of informal rules. The autonomy ofwage-earners is expressed first and foremost through their capacity to produce, negotiate, and legitimate these rules. The intraindividual level has proven to be central for the social regulation of flexible working time. It is not so much a question of legitimation, but rather the process of institutionalization nurtured by the energy invested by wage-earners in their personal quest for a compromise between their various roles, identities, and aspirations. It is this individualized regulation that is ensuring the success of the system under study

Spotlight Switzerland

Overview of the CATI surveys tradition in Switzerland, evolution of coverage of the landline and mobile phones and implications for survey strategie

Couples contemporains - Cohésion, régulation et conflits. Une enquête sociologique

Comment peut-on caractériser les relations de couple aujourd'hui ? Sont-elles marquées par l'autonomie des conjoints ou au contraire par la valorisation du « nous-couple » ou du « nous-famille » ? Les couples se replient-ils sur eux-mêmes ou s'ouvrent-ils sur le monde qui les entoure ? Du point de vue des rôles et du pouvoir, l'égalité entre hommes et femmes est-elle désormais pratiquée ou au contraire les arrangements traditionnels perdurent-ils ?Ce livre montre que la situation est caractérisée par une grande diversité de styles d'interactions conjugales plutôt que par un modèle unique. Ces styles répondent à des logiques associées au statut social, à la position dans le parcours de vie et à la participation sociale des couples. De plus, ils génèrent des niveaux de problèmes et de satisfaction très differents.L'intérêt d'une analyse sociologique du fonctionnement des couples contemporains ne tient pas qu'à l'importance d'un groupe que l'on dit essentiel pour la construction de l'individu et pour l'intégration sociale, mais aussi à l'interrogation sociale et politique générée par les mutations familiales des trente dernières années

How to survey displaced workers in Switzerland : Ways of addressing sources of bias

Studying career outcomes after job loss is challenging because individually displaced worker form a self-selected group. Indeed, the same factors causing the workers to lose their jobs, such as lack of motivation, may also reduce their re-employment prospects. Using data from plant closures where all workers were displaced irrespective of their individual characteristics offers a way around this selection bias. There is no systematic data collection on workers displaced by plant closure in Switzerland. Accordingly, we conducted our own survey on 1200 manufacturing workers who had lost their job 2 years earlier. The analysis of observational data gives rise to a set of methodological challenges, in particular nonresponse bias. Our survey addressed this issue by mixing data collection modes and repeating contact attempts. In addition, we combined the survey data with data from the public unemployment register to examine the extent of nonresponse bias. Our analysis suggests that some of our adjustments helped to reduce bias. Repeated contact attempts increased the response rate, but did not reduce nonresponse bias. In contrast, using telephone interviews in addition to paper questionnaires helped to substantially improve the participation of typically underrepresented subgroups. However, the survey respondents still differ from nonrespondents in terms of age, education and occupation. Interestingly, these differences have no significant impact on the substantial conclusion about displaced workers' re-employment prospects