Explaining the WageIndicator dataset WageIndicator conference 22 june 2006

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Explaining the WageIndicator dataset
WageIndicator conference 22 june 2006

• Kea Tijdens - AIAS

Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour
Studies Universiteit van Amsterdam
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The national website

• The web-survey
• the data of the web-survey is collected at one
  secure web-site
• thus jointly from all national websites
• The datamanager
• collects the data every week
• converts the txt-data into an SPSS format
• has developped programs for data-cleaning
• produces the quarterly data releases

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The data format

• SPSS
• quarterly data is in the SPSS format
• SPSS can be converted into Excel or Stata
• the number of variables
• currently 685 variables
• the variable format
• almost all variables are numeric
• a few string variables, f.e. occtext, sectext,
  survetext
• a few variables in the DATE/TIME format

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The variable names

• variable names and labels
• var names have up to 8 characters, f.e.constres
• all var names have labels, f.e. Finds job
  stressful
• var labels refer to the question in the
  questionnaire
• capitals used for joint parallel questions, f.e.
• FOR employees, self-employed, apprentices How
  much time is needed to become fully effective in
  your job for someone with your qualifications?
  (edujobtr)
• FOR School pupil, student How much time is
  needed to become fully effective in your job?
  (edujobt1)
• -gt EDUJOBT
• capitals used for data from cascades, f.e.
• NACE4NUM, for the question Please select the
  main business activity of the organisation where
  you work

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Numerical variables have values

• values of edumore Has gained further
  qualifications
• 1 Yes
• 0 No
• missing values
• 9 User missing
• 8 Not applicable
• 1 Not (contstgt1)
• the 1 values indicate the routing
• system missing values
• in countries where the question is not asked, the
  variable has a system missing value

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Frequency table contst
contst Current employment activity Frequen
Valid 1 Never paid job 371 0.2
. 2 Self-employed, own-account worker, freelance 6182 3.1
. 3 Family worker / working for family business 763 0.4
. 4 Contract by results 78 0.0
. 5 Free for task 168 0.1
. 10 Unemployed / looking for a job 3187 1.6
. 15 Sickness benefit / incapacity for work 699 0.4
. 20 School pupil, student in full-time education 5148 2.6
. 25 Apprentice, trainee 2430 1.2
. 30 In a job creation scheme 726 0.4
. 40 Employee 174338 88.4
. 41 Ambtenaar (alleen Belgie) 618 0.3
. 50 Other 2578 1.3
Total . 197286 100
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Frequency table edumore
edumore Has gained further qualifications Frequency Percent
Valid 0 No 32099 16.3
1 Yes 71179 36.1
Total 103281 52.4
Missing -9 User missing 3898 2.0
-8 Na 4118 2.1
-1 Not ((contst gt 19) and (contst lt 30)) 5525 2.8
System 80467 40.8
Total 94005 47.6
Total 197286 100
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First letters in variable name refer to (examples)
break spell out of the labour force
cao collective bargaining agreement
chld child
cob country of birth
comm commuting
comp working with computer
con working conditions (health and safety)
cont contract
dep department
wa amount in case of fringe benefit
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The meta data

• indentifying national data
• locale f.e. en_IN
• country f.e. 32 Argentina
• indentifying the date of survey
• SURVEDAT Date of survey (Date format)
• SURVEWW Week of survey (Num)
• SURVEYY Year of survey (Num)
• survetb Time of survey (begin) (Time format)
• survete Time of survey (end) (Time format)
• indentifying cases
• IDNR (unique, refering to surveynumber followup
  nr)
• idkey (unique, automatically assigned)

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The syntax shop

• research lab at www.wageindicator.org
• SPSS syntax files are available for
• computing new grouped variables (f.e. age group)
• value labels for occupation in the national
  language
• you can send us syntax files and we can post them