Measuring occupations in web-surveys: the WISCO database of occupations

Occupation is a key variable in socio-economic research. In surveys, occupation is predominantly asked using an open response format, followed by field- or office-coding. Web-surveys can apply a closed response format, allowing for respondent’s self-identification when using a detailed list of distinct occupational titles and a search tree for navigating. This article summarizes the principles underlying the WISCO Database of Occupations for web-surveys, which includes a source list of 1,594 occupational titles in English, country-specific translations of these occupational titles, and a 3-tier search tree. The occupational titles are coded according to ILO’s international classification of occupations, ISCO-08. The database has been designed as part of the EU-FP6 EurOccupations project, measuring occupations with a greater precision than ISCO 4-digit by adding further digits, and is freely available from www.euroccupations.org. The WISCO Database is currently used in the WageIndicator web-survey on work and wages in approximately 50 countries, see: http://www.wageindicator.or

Employees’ Preferences for more or fewer Working Hours. The Effects of Usual, Contractual and Standard Working Time, Family Phase and Household Characteristics, and Job Satisfaction

This study seeks explanations for working time preferences, using cross-sectional multinomial logits for the 2001/2002 Wage Indicator dataset (N=21,727). As expected, the preferences are predominately influenced by working hours’ characteristics, showing that employees with long hours prefer to work shorter hours and that short-hours workers prefer longer hours. New is the finding that salaried employees indeed want to reduce hours whereas hourly paid employees prefer to work longer hours. In contrast to public opinion, female employees show a better fit between preferred and contractual hours compared to male employees. Particularly male employees whose children have left home prefer working fewer hours. The study further shows that wage rates have a large impact on working time preferences, the lowest earnings category preferring far more often longer hours. Regarding job characteristics, employees in a challenging job less often prefer fewer hours. The employees reporting conflicts at the workplace and insufficient staffing more often prefer fewer hours