European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) (English Version)

*Note: The item was tested both in English and German.*

Cognitive Interviews

English version:

How many hours a week on average do you work in job(s) other than your main paid job?

German version:

Wie viele Stunden pro Woche arbeiten Sie durchschnittlich in Ihrer/Ihren Nebentätigkeit(en)?

English version:
Number of hours: ____
Don't know
Refusal

German version:
Anzahl der Stunden pro Woche: ____
Weiß nicht
Verweigert

Question: No changes recommended.
Answer categories: No changes recommended.

Cognitive Techniques:

General/Elaborative Probing, Specific Probing.

In the EWCS, this question is only asked to respondents with a regular additional paid job. For pretesting purposes, it was also presented to respondents with an occasional additional paid job. The goal was to examine whether the amount of hours in a paid job is what quantifies it as regular or occasional, or whether other factors determine this. Therefore, the evaluation of these probing questions was partly integrated into the analysis of Q27.
In Germany, with one exception, respondents with an occasional additional paid job work a very, very small number of hours per week, and most of them have difficulty measuring the amount of work in hours per week, but instead think of their work as single projects. Therefore, the main indicator for whether an additional job is regular or occasional is indeed the regularity, reliability, re-occurrence and stability of that job. This is generally mirrored in the number of hours, although number of hours are not the defining criterion.
Six German respondents had an occasional job. Of these, two couldn’t answer the question (DE06, DE10), one answered ‘0 hours’ (DE07), and another two named ‘1-1.5 hours’ (DE10, DE11). Only one respondent estimated that he spends 8 hours a week on his occasional job (DE01), which results from him giving workshops, which take up 1-2 working days when they take place. The respondent who gives 0 hours (DE07) explains that this was a one-time project so far, so she is not officially self-employed, and has no further self-employed projects coming up, though she hopes this will be the case in the future.
The respondent with several additional jobs (DE02) adds up the number of hours across all additional jobs. These are 19 hours for the main additional job, and in her estimation on average about 3 hours in the other, but explains that the number of hours in her additional occasional job varies.
In all cases, the number of hours across the main paid job and additional job added up accurately, or fairly accurately. Only in one case did a respondent who is self-employed and employed (DE02) reflect that she seems to work closer to 50 hours a week in total, and not 45 hours, as she originally estimated. Despite this single and small inconsistency, all respondents considered the correct job(s) in all questions.
In Poland, only six respondents had additional jobs, and of those only two described their additional job as “occasional”. However, both of them reported a relatively high number of hours in their occasional job (PL03: 12h; PL12: 4-5h). The amount of hours spent in regular additional jobs is otherwise comparable to the German figures.
One Polish respondent misunderstood Q27 to mean whether her main paid job is regular or occasional, and chose “occasional” (PL12). In Q28, she then includes volunteer work when answering the question. This job does not pay income, but it does take up time, and he is paid insurance and travel costs. This is a particularly drastic case of a respondent putting meaning into questions based on an earlier misunderstanding.
Asking this question only to respondents with a regular additional paid job is the optimal question routing, as respondents with occasional jobs often cannot answer this question in hours per week.

Job and career/ Job situation & professional activity

Working time: hours per week (other than main paid job)