Since its launch in 1990, the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) has provided an overview of working conditions in Europe.
European Working Conditions Survey 2010
Eurofound’s fifth edition of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), carried out in 2010, aimed to chart trends in working conditions, identify major risk factors and highlight issues meriting policy attention. It provided a unique insight into the views of workers in 34 countries, making this survey edition the most comprehensive one so far, in terms of geographical coverage. It covered a range of issues related to precarious employment, leadership styles, worker participation, general job context, working time, work organisation, pay, work-related health risks, cognitive and psychosocial factors, work–life balance and access to training.
Fiedwork was carried out between January and June of 2010.
Almost 44,000 workers were interviewed, covering 34 countries – EU27, Norway, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo.
Face to face, at home (i.e. outside the workplace), with an average duration of 44 minutes.
The questionnaire was translated into 32 languages including the key minority languages of the surveyed countries.
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.
Dashboard
The pattern of employment continues to change across Europe, with an ongoing shift from agriculture and manufacturing into services.
While this sectoral pattern of employment shifts, entrenched gender segregation within it remains constant.
More women are moving into supervisory roles. Increasingly, they manage other women.
The proportion of workers with a temporary contract has, overall, been rising.
The number of hours worked per week continues to drift downwards – on average.
Standard working time arrangements – a five-day week of 40 hours, worked Monday to Friday – is still the norm for most Europeans.
Almost one fifth of European workers are having difficulties achieving a satisfactory work–life balance, a slight decrease since 2000.
The level of training paid for by the employer over the last 12 months rose notably between 2005 and 2010.
There has been little or no increase in the intellectual challenges that work poses; workers seem to enjoy essentially the same levels of autonomy as they did a decade ago; furthermore, monotonous work seems to be somewhat more common.
Fewer workers feel their health and safety is at risk because of their work. The extent to which workers face (most) physical hazards remains unchanged.
Exposure to tobacco smoke has decreased over the last five years following the implementation of widespread anti-smoking legislation.
Work intensity remains at a high level.
Substantial numbers of Europeans do not feel confident about being able to remain in their current job until the age of 60.
This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.
The following publications were produced in relation to the EWCS 2010.
Methodology
In an effort to provide comparable and reliable data on working conditions across Europe, Eurofound has developed a unified methodological approach and quality assurance system. Over the years, the methodology has been improved, new concerns have been integrated and the geographical scope has expanded with the enlargements of the European Union.
Contractor
Gallup Europe (Belgium)
Coverage
27 EU Member States, Turkey, Croatia, the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Norway, Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro
Fieldwork period
January to June 2010
Target population
All residents of the countries mentioned above, aged 15 or older (aged 16 or older in Spain, the UK and Norway), and in employment at the time of the survey. People were considered to be in employment if they had worked for pay or profit for at least an hour in the week preceding the interview (ILO definition).
Sample
The basic sample is a multi-stage, stratified, random sample. Each country is divided into sections based on region and degree of urbanisation, in each of which a number of primary sampling units (PSU) is drawn randomly. Subsequently, a random sample of households is drawn in each PSU. Finally, in each household, the person chosen for interview is whoever is in the workforce and has his or her birthday next.
Sample size
The target sample size in most countries was 1,000. Exceptions were Germany and Turkey (target sample size of 2,000), and Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom (target sample size 1,500). Moreover, three countries decided to finance bigger national samples resulting in a target sample size of 4,000 in Belgium, 3,000 in France and 1,400 in Slovenia. The total number of interviews in 2010 was 43,816.
Type
Questionnaire-based with interviews conducted face to face in people's homes in the national language(s) of the country. Interview duration: 44 minutes.
Quality assurance
Quality control mechanisms were included in the tender specifications to ensure the survey was implemented in accordance with ‘best practice’ and that each stage was documented in detail. The contractor for the 5th EWCS has compiled a Quality assurance report which provides a summary of the quality assurance activities performed during the survey preparation, fieldwork and data processing. An external quality assessment took place to analyse the extent to which the quality criteria outlined in the European Statistical System (ESS) were met. It concluded that the 5th EWCS was based on a sound quality assurance framework and that notable improvements had been made compared to the previous survey edition.
Research report: Quality report of the 4th European working conditions survey
The European Working Conditions Survey 2010 questionnaire includes questions from previous rounds, where possible and relevant, to enable analysis of trends over time. In addition, new concepts are integrated to reflect new and emerging areas of interest. A number of questions were included in the questionnaire to capture the impact of the economic downturn on working conditions.
The fifth EWCS was implemented by Gallup Europe, who worked within a strong quality assurance framework, to ensure the highest possible standards in all data collection and editing processes.
Questionnaire development
The questionnaire underwent detailed preparation inhouse and was developed in close collaboration with an expert group. The process included pre-testing in two countries.
The questionnaire was based on previous rounds of the survey, updated with a view to:
maintain the balance between the different topics
retain core 'trend' questions to ensure continuity
identify new and emerging areas of interest
The main topics covered were: job context; working time; work intensity; physical factors; cognitive factors; psychosocial factors; health and well-being; skills, training and career prospects; work organisation; social relationships; job fulfillment; work-life balance; financial security and violence, harassment and discrimination.
New questions were introduced to enable more in-depth analysis of psychosocial risks, worker participation, precarious employment and job security, place of work, work-life balance, leadership styles and health. The questionnaire also included new questions addressed specifically to self-employed workers (e.g. financial security). In addition, the questions on household characteristics were expanded to find out more about the other members of the respondent’s household (age, gender, economic activity, working full time or part-time).
Development of the questionnaire started approximately two years before fieldwork. Firstly, Eurofound carried out literature reviews and made an internal evaluation of the previous survey. An external review also took place with key users of the previous EWCS. This was followed by a general user survey aimed at finding out more about the type and origin of the user and for what reason they used the dataset, learning which themes and topics the users were particularly interested in and gathering feedback about how satisfied they were with the EWCS and what could be improved. The user survey provided some valuable input to the preparation for the 5th EWCS and, reassuringly, confirmed user satisfaction to be high.
The draft questionnaire was then developed in close cooperation with a questionnaire development expert group. This group included members of Eurofound's Governing Board, representatives of the European Social Partners, other EU bodies (EU Commission, Eurostat, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work), international organisations (OECD, ILO), national statistical institutes and leading European experts in the field.
Subsequently, the draft questionnaire was finalised into a version which could be pre-tested. The pre-test was held in English and in French and comprised cognitive interviews and 'real life' interviews. The respondent and interviewer feedback from the pre-test helped to establish the final questionnaire.
Eurofound has produced a historical overview that maps the development of the questionnaire. It includes all the questions that were ever asked in all of the editions of the EWCS, organised by topic. For each question, it allows tracing in which edition(s) it was asked, and whether anything was changed in the phrasing or in the answering categories.
In order to develop a valid, reliable and internationally comparable questionnaire the translation from the English master file into the other languages required a series of steps and contributions from a team of experts.
For each version:
Two independent experts translated the questionnaire into their language
A third person combined these versions into one
This combined version was translated back into English, and
A final version was validated by our EWCO correspondents who are experts on working conditions research.
The European Working Conditions Survey has been carried out five times with some questions repeated in one or more waves. That makes it necessary to treat previously used questions (trend questions) differently from new questions to enable comparisons over time and to maintain the consistency of the data. The translations of trend questions – some of them dating back as far as 1991 – were changed only in case of serious discrepancies between the English master and the translation.
The EWCS 2010 questionnaire was translated into 32 languages including the key minority languages of the surveyed countries. Nine of the languages were used in more than one country and adapted to the cultural context when necessary.
In order to develop a valid, reliable and internationally comparable questionnaire the translation from the English master file into the other languages required a series of steps and contributions from a team of experts.
For each version:
Two independent experts translated the questionnaire into their language
A third person combined these versions into one
This combined version was translated back into English, and
A final version was validated by our external correspondents who are experts on working conditions research.
The European Working Conditions Survey has been carried out five times with some questions repeated in one or more survey editions. That makes it necessary to treat previously used questions (trend questions) differently from new questions to enable comparisons over time and to maintain the consistency of the data. The translations of trend questions – some of them dating back as far as 1991 – were changed only in case of serious discrepancies between the English master and the translation.
The EWCS 2010 questionnaire was translated into 32 languages including the key minority languages of the surveyed countries. Nine of the languages were used in more than one country and adapted to the cultural context when necessary.
Eurofound experts
You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.
Agnès Parent-Thirion
Senior research managerAgnès Parent-Thirion is a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound, tasked with the planning, development and implementation of working conditions research projects, in particular the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and its analyses. She is responsible for the EWCS 2021 extraordinary edition and for the preparation of the questionnaire for the EWCS 2024. Her research interests include working conditions, job quality, the monitoring of working conditions, work organisation, gender, the future of work and time. She has been working in the area of European comparative surveys for more than a decade, in all aspects including design, questionnaire development, fieldwork, quality control and analysis. She is a graduate in economics and management from Paris IX Dauphine and Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne universities and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. She has recently completed online courses on artificial intelligence: inquiry-driven leadership with MIT Sloan Executive Education and ‘Les grand enjeux de la transition: re-ouvrir l'horizon, comprendre pour agir’ with the Campus de la Transition. Before joining Eurofound, she worked for a number of years in the European Commission.
Sophia MacGoris
Surveys officerSophia MacGoris is surveys officer based in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She works on all three of Eurofound's surveys. Having been involved in cross-national surveys for many years, she uses her experience and her transversal role to ensure a continuity of learning and quality assurance to the highest level during the entire survey process. Prior to joining Eurofound in 1996, she worked for several years in the European Commission in Brussels in the area of science, research and development. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Social Science specialising in Social Policy.
