DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-9026-1
title: European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, 2021
title: European Working Conditions Surveys, 1991-
title: EWCTS

description: &lt;p&gt;The &lt;i&gt;European Working Conditions Survey&lt;/i&gt; (EWCS) is conducted by Eurofound (the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions). Since its launch in 1990, the EWCS has provided an overview of working conditions in Europe. The main objectives of the survey are to:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;assess and quantify working conditions of both employees and the self-employed across Europe on a harmonised basis;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;analyse relationships between different aspects of working conditions;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;identify groups at risk and issues of concern as well as of progress;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;monitor trends by providing homogeneous indicators on these issues; and&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;contribute to European policy development in particular on quality of work and employment issues.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;Themes covered include employment status, working time duration and organisation, work organisation, learning and training, physical and psychosocial risk factors, health and safety, work-life balance, worker participation, earnings and financial security, as well as work and health.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;The EWCS paints a wide-ranging picture of Europe at work across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups. Its findings highlight actions for policy actors to help them address the challenges facing Europe today. The EWCS is generally conducted once every five years, although an extra wave was conducted in 2001 to cover the new acceding and candidate EU countries. The survey is based on a questionnaire which is administered face-to-face to a random sample of 'persons in employment' (i.e. employees and the self-employed), representative of the working population in each EU country. An integrated dataset is also available (see SN 7363) which combines data from the first five waves of the survey in one file.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; Before working with the EWCS data, users are recommended to read the latest supplementary supporting documentation on the Eurofound &lt;a href="http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/european-working-conditions-surveys" title="European Working Conditions Survey" target="_blank"&gt;European Working Conditions Survey&lt;/a&gt; webpages. Further information about the series can be found there, including methodological information, technical reports and reports on translation, sampling implementation, sampling evaluation and weighting, coding, quality control, quality assurance and other publications.&lt;br&gt; &lt;br&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;EWCTS 2021&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The regular face-to-face EWCS had to be prematurely terminated in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic so, in 2021, Eurofound carried out a once-off European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).&lt;span&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;The EWCTS 2021 included over 70,000 workers in 36 European countries: the EU Member States, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. Changing the survey mode to CATI is in line with other similar surveys in the context of the COVID pandemic.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;The EWCTS 2021 allows Eurofound to provide comparable and representative information on job quality at a time when working lives have undergone considerable changes and the capacity of people at work to contribute to the recovery is critical. Due to the change in interviewing mode, comparison with previous editions of the EWCS may not be possible so the options for analysis of trends over time are limited.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Documentation&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;Users should note that the only methodological documentation currently available with the study is a Readme file. Further documentation will be provided by the depositor in due course. Users should also note that the UKDS data filenames may differ slightly from those currently quoted in the Readme file, but there is no difference in the content&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;14 December release&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new version of the data file, released on 14 December 2022, contains an updated version of the variable strain_degree_index. This variable has been updated by the depositor, as it contained an error in the distribution of its categories in the version released on 2nd December. Users whose analysis is likely to be affected by this should obtain the new version.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;