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SURVEY HITS THE GROUND RUNNING
Piloting a complex survey in eighteen countries in less than a month is no mean feat, but thanks to the efficiency of staff at NOP’s international call centre in London, this was achieved in spring 2000 by the EMERGENCE team.
The EMERGENCE employer survey is collecting information on twelve different types of e-work across seven different types of e-activity. Multiply that by the number of countries in the world (and, in the case of Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada, the number of regions, states or provinces), and that may give you some idea of the huge number of variables which have to be captured in a single computer-assisted questionnaire. Then multiply that by the seventeen different languages in which the survey is currently being carried out, and you see the enormity of the task facing the programmers, translators and data analysts at NOP and IES who are conducting the survey.
NOP’s multi-lingual team of interviewers carried out pilot interviews in all EU countries plus Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. In the light of feedback from these interviews, the questionnaire was refined and adjusted and a second pilot carried out to test the changes. By July, 2000, fieldwork was well under way and we are on target to complete the 8,000 plus interviews in the first wave, which involves a random sample of employers with over 50 employees, across all sectors.
In the second wave of fieldwork, and subject to funding, the survey will be extended beyond Europe to Canada, Australia and the United States. Supplementary interviews will also be carried out in small firms (with fewer than 50 employees) in the knowledge sector.
The first results of this survey will be launched at the Where in the World? Conference in Budapest on October 24.