Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) documents living conditions and people’s social situation, and explores issues pertinent to the lives of European citizens.
European Quality of Life Survey 2007
Eurofound’s second European quality of life survey (EQLS), carried out in 2007, offers a wide-ranging view of the diverse social realities of people living in Europe, across a set of key domains: employment and income, family and community life, health and housing.
The survey was carried out from September 2007 to February 2008.
Approximately 35,000 interviews were conducted in 31 countries, including the EU27 and Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway and Turkey.
Interviews were mainly conducted face to face.
The master questionnaire was translated into 30 different languages.
To display this data, use the filters below to select a question. Refine the results by selecting a country (or group of countries), apply additional filters (which vary throughout the surveys) or change the visualisation by selecting a preferred chart type.
EQLS 2007 dashboard
Europeans are generally satisfied and happy with life: on a scale from 1 to 10, the EU27 average is 7 for life satisfaction and 7.5 for happiness.
Disparities in household incomes across Europe are stark: in the EU27, Bulgaria and Romania have incomes almost as low as that of the candidate country, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; to cope with inadequate income, around half of all households in the NMS12 and CC3 (with the exception of Cyprus and Malta) grow some of their own food.
The family is highly involved in childcare and eldercare and remains the first port of call for personal support in emergencies; Europeans report high levels of satisfaction with their family life; women still spend more time than men in caring activities and domestic duties.
A good work-life balance is tricky to achieve and problems with it appear to be most common in south-eastern Europe: in Croatia and Greece, a little over 70% of working citizens say that they are too tired to do household jobs at least several times a month because of work.
81% of EU residents said that good health was ‘very important’ for their quality of life: however, on average, only 21% of people rate their health as ‘very good’.
When asked to rate the quality of society, people in the eastern European NMS12 – and in Italy and Portugal – trust their political institutions the least. Citizens in the Nordic countries, and in Turkey, have the most trust in their institutions; people in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands also express the highest levels of trust in other people.
This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.
The following publications were produced in relation to EQLS 2007.
Methodology
In preparation for the second EQLS a review of methodology used in the 2003 survey was carried out and recommendations for improvement are reflected in the second survey.
Contractor
TNS-Opinion
Coverage
27 EU Member States and Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway and Turkey
Fieldwork period
The fieldwork was carried out from 20 September 2007 to 20 November 2007 in most countries; until 13 December 2007 in Denmark and 18 January 2008 in Luxembourg. The only exception was the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia where the fieldwork was conducted in February 2008.
Target population
General adult population (18 years and older)
Sample
In most of the countries, the EQLS sample followed a multi-stage, stratified and clustered design with a ‘random walk’ procedure for the selection of the households at the last stage. In all countries, the sampling selection process was random at each possible stage, i.e. the selection of primary sampling units, the selection of addresses, the selection of households and the selection of individuals aged 18 and over. Only one person from the same household was interviewed.
Sample size
A total of 35,634 interviews were completed. For 24 of the countries, the achieved sample size was around 1,000. For France, Italy, Poland and the UK the sample size was approximately 1,500. In Germany and Turkey it was 2,000.
Type
Questionnaire-based interviews conducted face to face in most countries. In three countries part of the interview was conducted by telephone. The average duration of interviews was 36 minutes.
Quality assurance
The quality of the survey processes was assessed in all its stages, starting from the sampling design to the final dissemination of data. Quality control was performed by internal and external agents. A minimum of 20% of interviews and routes were checked in each country.
The questionnaire was first piloted in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and then pre-tested in all participating countries. The questionnaire was translated into all national languages.
Questionnaire development
The EQLS 2007 questionnaire covered a broad spectrum of life domains with an emphasis on employment, income and financial situation, education, housing and local environment, family, health, work–life balance, subjective well-being, social and political participation, quality of social services and quality of society.
The questionnaire from the first edition of the EQLS in 2003 was reviewed and improved in close cooperation with the Social Science Center (WZB) questionnaire development group. While the priority was to retain core questions to enable time series and trend analysis, a certain number of new areas were identified where the survey’s scope could be usefully extended (e.g. quality of local environment, mental health, attitudes toward migrants).
Many of the questions asked in the first EQLS 2003 were asked again, on such issues as employment, income, education, housing, family, health, work–life balance, life satisfaction and perceived quality of society. Being in possession of two sets of data allowed the research team to gauge how people’s lives have changed in the intervening years.
New questions introduced were, wherever possible, based on questions already successfully used in other similar national surveys. In the case of certain background variables such as education level, occupation and net household income, more adjustments have been made in order to increase the quality of analytical variables and contribute to the enrichment of analytical possibilities.
The draft version of the master questionnaire was tested in the pilot survey. The pilot survey was conducted from 7 to 15 July 2007 in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with 100 interviews in each country. The results from the pilot survey were subsequently analysed in order to detect any problematic items, especially those resulting in non-response.
The questionnaire is available in Annex 1 of the overview report.
Research report: Second European Quality of Life Survey – Overview
The analysis assessment concluded that overall, the survey was conducted to the highest quality standards. It was noted that relatively small sample sizes and high non-response were the major limitations that affect accuracy of the survey data. Although sample sizes were big enough to make a general population profile at the country level, they were too small to allow detailed analysis of sub-groups within countries.
The quality assessment report assessed the quality of the survey output on the following five key quality components set out by the European Statistical System: Relevance, Accuracy, Timeliness and punctuality, Accessibility and clarity, and Coherency and comparability. On the basis of the assessment it makes recommendations for the forthcoming rounds of the survey.
Research report: Quality Assessment of the 2nd European Quality of Life Survey
Interviews were conducted in the national languages of each country. The master questionnaire was translated into 30 different languages, with 7 of them used in more than one country. The translations were done in accordance with current good practices in multilingual translation of international survey questionnaires.
For trend questions, existing translations from previous surveys were retained except in a small number of cases where problems were identified and new revised translations introduced. For new and modified questions, the English master version was subject to parallel translation into the main target languages by independent translators familiar with survey research in the living conditions area.
These parallel translations were merged into a final draft which was then translated back into English to identify and resolve remaining problems or ambiguities. A number of the translations were also subject to final review by Eurofound research managers and national experts from the expert development questionnaire group who assisted the Eurofound in this task.
The translated versions of national questionnaires were pre-tested. The pre-test was conducted in all countries participating in the survey except Macedonia, which joined the whole operation later, when no time for pre-testing was left. The pre-test consisted of 25 interviews per country, conducted from 20 to 27 August 2007.
Below is the list of languages for each country.
| Survey country | Languages | Survey country | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | German | Italy | Italian |
| Belgium | French, Dutch | Latvia | Latvian, Russian |
| Bulgaria | Bulgarian | Lithuania | Lithuanian |
| Cyprus | Greek | Luxembourg | Luxembourgish, French, German |
| Czech Republic | Czech | Malta | Maltese, English |
| Denmark | Danish | Netherlands | Dutch |
| Estonia | Estonian, Russian | Poland | Polish |
| Finland | Finnish, Swedish | Portugal | Portuguese |
| France | French | Romania | Romanian |
| Germany | German | Slovakia | Slovakian |
| Greece | Greek | Slovenia | Slovenian |
| Hungary | Hungarian | Spain | Spanish, Catalan |
| Ireland | English | Sweden | Swedish |
| United Kingdom | English |
| Survey country | Languages | Survey country | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Croatia | Croatian | Turkey | Turkish |
| Norway | Norwegian |
Eurofound experts
You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.
Daphne Ahrendt
Senior research managerDaphne Ahrendt is a senior research manager in the Social Policies unit at Eurofound. She is the coordinator of the survey management and development activity. In 2020, she initiated Eurofound’s Living and Working in the EU e-survey and now leads the 2026 European Quality of Life Survey, which she has worked on since the survey started in 2003. With over 30 years of experience in international survey research, she is also a member of the GESIS Scientific Advisory Board. Beyond surveys, her substantive research focuses on social cohesion, trust and the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Daphne started her career at the National Centre for Social Research in London where she worked on the International Social Survey Programme before moving to the Eurobarometer Unit at the European Commission. She holds a Master's degree in Criminal Justice Policies from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from San Francisco State University.
Eszter Sándor
Senior research managerEszter Sandor is a senior research manager in the Social Policies unit at Eurofound. She has extensive experience in survey management, including questionnaire design and scripting, data preparation (processing, cleaning, weighting), and statistical analysis using R. She manages Eurofound’s e-survey (Living and working in the EU) and contributes to the preparation and management of the European Quality of Life Survey. Her research focuses on the quality of life of young people and families, including subjective well-being, mental well-being and living conditions.
Before joining Eurofound, she worked as an economic consultant in Scotland, specialising in economic impact assessments, evaluations, and input-output analysis. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Budapest University of Economics and Business and a Master’s degree in Economics and International Relations from Corvinus University of Budapest.
