DOI: 10.17608/k6.auckland.2000955
title: ISSP2005: Work Orientations III

description: The fifteenth of 20 years of International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) surveys in New Zealand by Professor Philip Gendall, Department of Marketing, Massey University.The ISSP is a continuing annual programme of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics important for social science research. It brings together pre-existing social science projects and coordinates research goals, thereby adding a cross-national, cross-cultural perspective to the individual national studies. ISSP researchers especially concentrate on developing questions that are meaningful and relevant to all countries, and can be expressed in an equivalent manner in all relevant languages.A verbose rundown on topics covered follows.Attitudes towards work. Work orientation and description of work contents. Preferred time budget for selected activities such as work, leisure time etc.; work orientation; importance of selected demands of a job (scale); preference for being self-employed or being an employee and working in a small or in a large firm and working in private business or civil service; advantages of the employee status (greater job security and lower impairment of the family life); importance of unions for job security and working conditions of employee; preference for full-time employment or part-time employment; preference for more work (and money) or for reduction in working hours.Characterisation of respondent’s work and work satisfaction (scale); physical exhaustion after work; frequency of dangerous and unhealthy job situations; possibility of flexible organisation of respondent’s working time; personal opportunity to influence the organization of the workday or work process; difficulties in handling personal matters during working hours; frequency of the impairment of the family life by the work requirements and vice versa; usefulness of the abilities learned from past work experience for the present job; helpfulness of the present work experiences for looking for a new job; job training in past year to improve job skills; judgement on the relationship between management and employees (working atmosphere).Description of personal commitment to work; identification with firm or organisation (scale); expected difficulties in finding a job as good as the current one; self-assessment of one’s own substitutability; likeliness of job search in the coming 12 months; worrying about one’s own job security; accepted concessions to avoid own unemployment (accepting a job with new demands, accepting of a lower paid position, temporary employment and longer travel to get to work); existence of a side job; self-assessment of psychological characteristics of personality.Those who are not currently employed were asked: work for more than one year and time last paid job ended; main reason for the end of employment; interest in finding a paid job; expected difficulties in finding a new job; currently looking for a job; activities in the search for work; training activities to improve job skills in past year; main income source.Demography: sex; age; marital status; living together with a partner; education and duration of education; current employment status; occupation (ISCO88); employment in private or public sector; self-employment or employee; personal employees; time worked each week; superior function and span of control; company size; income; religious denomination; religiousness; union member; self-assessment of social class; self-assessment on a left-right continuum; party preference; size of household and composition; city size; region; original country of origin or ethnic group affiliation.