ReadMe.txt for 'Work in the European Gig Economy: Research Results from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy'.

This dataset supports the following publication:
Huws, U., Spencer, N.H., Syrdal, D.S. & Holt, K. (2017) 'Work in the European Gig Economy: Research Results from the UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy', FEPS - Foundation for European Progressive Studies, UNI Europa, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire. ISBN 978-2-930769-11-0.

Principal Investigator:
Professor Ursula Huws, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, United Kingdom; u.huws@herts.ac.uk.

Co-Investigator and contact for queries relating to these data:
Dr Neil H. Spencer, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, United Kingdom; n.h.spencer@herts.ac.uk.

This joint research project, which is ongoing, was launched in January 2016. It is being carried out by the University of Hertfordshire in association with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and UNI Europa, the European services workers union. Co-funding for national surveys was provided by the Trade Union Unionen in Sweden, the TNO Research Institute in the Netherlands, The Chamber of Labour (AK) in Austria, the Trade Unions Ver.di and IG Metall in Germany, the Trade Union syndicom in Switzerland and the Fondazione EYU in Italy. Fieldwork for the surveys in these seven countries was carried out by Ipsos MORI between January 2016 and April 2017.

License:
We release the following documents under a creative commons 'CC-BY 4.0' license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/):
* Readme.txt (this document)
* File Information for Austria (AT).pdf
* Austria (AT).csv
* Austria (AT).por
* File Information for Germany (DE).pdf
* Germany (DE).csv
* Germany (DE).por
* File Information for Italy (IT).pdf
* Italy (IT).csv
* Italy (IT).por
* File Information for Netherlands (NL).pdf
* Netherlands (NL).csv
* Netherlands (NL).por
* File Information for Sweden (SE).pdf
* Sweden (SE).csv
* Sweden (SE).por
* File Information for Switzerland (CH).pdf
* Switzerland (CH).csv
* Switzerland (CH).por
* File Information for United Kingdom (UK).pdf
* United Kingdom (UK).csv
* United Kingdom (UK).por

Description of Data:
These data are from an innovative survey across seven European countries, revealing, for the first time, the extent and characteristics of crowd workers in Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. In the above mentioned report, the survey results are complemented by in-depth interviews with a range of crowd workers, shedding light on the realities of their working lives, including the stresses, fears and health hazards they face, as well as the satisfactions they experience.

The data are responses to questions asked in the surveys carried out by IPSOS Mori. Details of these questions are given in the 'File Information ...' files for each country along with the coding of responses for categorical variables.

Each country in the survey has two data files associated with it. Those files with a '.por' suffix are portable IBM SPSS Statistics data files. Those files with a '.csv' suffix are comma separated values versions of these '.por' files.

For the purposes of archiving, variable names have been made consistent across datasets and the English language has been used (with the exception of variables with names starting 'cq10' which are country-specific). Similarly, labels for values of categorical variables have been made consistent across datasets and the English language has been used (with the exception of variables which have country-specific labels - 'region', 'qemp', 'qmar', 'qedu', 'qinc', 'pinc' - for Switzerland, the English language has been used as a neutral choice).

For anonymisation purposes, the following procedures have been applied:
1. Ages changed into age ranges (using same ranges as in report).
2. For each country, a tabulation of age-group/gender/region was created. Where any cell counts were less than 5, regions were merged until all counts were at least 5.

Notes on differences in data collected:
1. Variable status_5 was only collected for Italy and Switzerland.
2. Variable cq04 was only collected for Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.
3. Variables cq04_1, cq04_2, cq04_3 were only collected for Italy and Switzerland.