A I A S 1

The WageIndicator

web-survey:

past and future developments

16 April 2008 Kea Tijdens

University of AmsterdamAmsterdam Institute for

Advanced Labour Studies

A I A S 2

What is the WageIndicator web-survey?

• Where?– Posted at all 36 national WageIndicator websites– These websites provide free Salary Check information– Message to the web-visitor:

please complete the survey in return

• What?– Web-survey has questions on work and wages– Web-survey questions are largely similar across countries

• Why?– The survey data is used for:

1) the calculations underlying the Salary Check2) research

A I A S 3

Past improvements

• It is an international web-survey– Harmonize survey questions across countries– Develop search trees for occupation & industry

• … leading to web-survey data – Convert web-data into statistical data– Cope with large numbers of observations– Cope with a continuous flow of data– Clean data

A I A S 4

Recent improvements

• The survey is split in two parts– critical survey question in two parts (both 10 minutes)– in between a go/no go decision to 2nd part– AIM: to reduce break off & increase number of completed surveys

• Dynamic pageing– several questions on one web page– conditional questions pop up– AIM: to reduce the number of clicks for the visitor

• Output lines at the bottom of the page– summary of answers to the survey question– AIM: to improve data quality

• Recent improvements in cleaning of wage data

A I A S 5

A survey tool

• Open for new survey questions– We now can add survey questions

for national partners/affiliates (at cost price)– f.e. in NL survey we added questions on flexible

wages for FNV Bondgenoten (2007/4 – 2008/1)

• Two possibilities1) adding new survey questions

in the ‘project block’ between part 1 and part 2• addressing all respondents • addressing a selection, such as metal workers, workers 55+,

low-educated workers, or alike2) launching a category questionnaire for

a specific group with specific questions & routing,

f.e. workers in one company or in one occupation

A I A S 6

Future improvements ??

• Salary Check at end questionnaire– Feed back to the respondents, benchmarking

their reported wage with wages in their peer group

• Respondent-side updates– Let respondents update their data in a ‘profile’– Thus starting a panel

• Fun & trust– It must be more fun to complete the survey– Respondents must continue to trust the survey

A I A S 7

Future data quality

• Improving measuring respondent’s– education– home region– industrial relations at the workplace– informal labour market: employment status & wages– company names in the large Multinational database– using textboxes to improve search trees

• Weights for the data– Updating & improving weights

so that the data resemble a national labour force

A I A S 8

A worldwide wages database

• A globalising economy …– requires worldwide comparative data on wages– which are currently only very limited available

• WageIndicator …– might develop as a worldwide database on

wages, benefits, working hours, working conditions, industrial relations at the workplace

– all publicly available through national Salary Checks and Occupation profiles

– thus increasing transparency in the labour market

A I A S 9

The end

• Thank you for your attention

• For more information:www.wageindicator.org