Validating ESeC using Round 1 of the European Social Survey

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Validating ESeC using Round 1 of the European
Social Survey

• ESeC Validation Conference, Lisbon, January 2006
• Eric Harrison David Rose
• ISER, University of Essex

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Starting Point

• Early versions of ESeC drew on questions asked
  about employment relations in UK LFS used to
  validate NS-SEC
• Advantage both NS-SEC and ESeC use same
  conceptual grounding (i.e. EGP)
• Disadvantage
• time lapse (1996-97 to 2004)
• Enlarged and heterogeneous European area

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Three Definitions of Validity

• Criterion does it measure what it purports to
  measure?
• Construct does it predict the kinds of things
  it ought to predict?
• Operational does it work?

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European Social Survey

• Round 1 used here (Round 2 now available, Round 3
  in progress)
• 22 countries, 42,359 cases
• Most or all of the information needed to make an
  ESeC (i.e. 3 or 4 digit ISCO, supervision,
  establishment size)

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The Treatment of Employment Status

• Self-employed, managers, supervisors, employees
• No problem with self-employed
• Exception Norway where self-employed have no
  occupational information. Solution small
  employers to class 4, large employers to class 1.
• Family workers (small N) treated as employees
• Supervision
• Management

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Does Size Matter?

• Potential contradictions between OUG and
  employment status variable

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Does Size Matter?

• Potential contradictions between OUG and
  employment status variable
• Want to get impression of accuracy of size coding
  versus OUG
• So, ignored employment status and allocated ISCO
  grous 12 and 13 to their simplified class

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Distribution of raw class data
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Correspondence between 4 and 3 digit ESeC
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ISCO Codes moving between classes 8 and 9
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From Nine Classes to Five

• Much movement is within employment relations
  boundaries
• Collapsed ESeC
• 1 and 2 the service class
• 3 and 6 intermediate technical class
• 4 and 5 the self-employed
• 7 lower sales and service workers
• 8 and 9 manual working class

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A Collapsed 5-class ESeC
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Employment Relations through Work Autonomy
(difficulty of monitoring)

• The ESS invited respondents to say
• how much the management at your work allows
  you.
• to be flexible in your working hours?
• To decide how your own daily work is organised?
• To influence your environment?
• To influence decisions about the general
  direction of your work?
• To change your work tasks if you wish to?

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Mean Work autonomy scores
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Effects of Size in Management groups

• Being in group 12 (corporate managers) increased
  work autonomy score by 0.5 points (statistically
  significant)
• Being in an establishment of 10 workers had a
  negative and non-significant effect
• At minor group level, only 123 (specialist
  managers) have significantly better outcomes than
  other groups

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Distinguishing classes 8 and 9

• Literature on deskilling of lower technical
  occupations through technology and working
  arrangements
• How wide a phenomenon How deep?
• Analysis identifies candidate occupations within
  class 8 and calls them class ten
• Compare work autonomy scores for classes 8, 9 and
  10.

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Work autonomy scores for bottom classes
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Poor Subjective Health
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Next Steps

• Further investigation of country types (see
  Dutch validation)
• Explore round 2 data from European Social Survey
• Assess utility of ESeC in other ISCO-based
  datasets (International Social Survey Programme)