International Social Survey Program: Work Orientations II, 1997 (ICPSR 34840)

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The International Social Survey Program (ISSP) is an ongoing program of crossnational collaboration. Formed in 1983, the group develops topical modules dealing with important areas of social science as supplements to regular national surveys. This survey is the second in a series exploring the "work orientations" topic. The first survey on this topic was conducted in 1989. Participating countries in the present survey include Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. As in 1989, the module focused on the areas of general attitudes toward work and leisure, work organization, and work content. Opinions were elicited on issues such as respondent preferences for more work or more leisure time, the value of work in general, and how important factors such as job security, high income, opportunities for advancement, job interest, independence, and value to others were to the respondent. Other questions focused on what factors should determine how to pay two people doing the same kind of work, the effects the introduction of new technologies (computers, robots, etc.) would have on the workplace, attitudes about self-employment, size of the workplace, public vs. private sector employment, and full-time vs. part-time work. Respondents were also asked how easy or difficult it would be to find an acceptable job, how they felt about their present job, and how they viewed their working conditions (e.g., if they came home exhausted from work, amount of stress and possible danger on the job, working hours, place of work, whether their status was temporary or permanent, how their present job made use of their skills, and how they acquired these skills). Additional questions elicited information on relations in the workplace between management and employees and between workmates, how satisfied respondents were with their job, how they felt about their organization, how many days they had been absent (excluding vacation) from work in the last six months, how likely it was that they would try to find a new job within the next twelve months, and how much they worried about the possibility of losing their job. A special group of questions focused on respondents who were not currently employed. Demographic variables include age, sex, education, marital status, personal and family income, employment status, household size and composition, occupation, religion and church attendance, social class, union membership, political party, voting history, size of community, region, and ethnicity.

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