The WageIndicator web survey for worldwide social science research on wages

Paulien Osse, WageIndicator Foundation Kea Tijdens, University of Amsterdam

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March 2007, ILO

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The WageIndicator concept

National WageIndicator websites
with up-to-date work-related information answering visitors emails

Salary Check
providing free occupation-specific wage information controlling for age, gender, education and region

Web survey

asking the visitors a favor in return completing a web survey on work and wages (prize incentive) the data are used for research and as input for the Salary Check

Large numbers of visitors

worldwide, the public shows a desire for wage information and is willing to complete the web survey 2

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A brief history (Netherlands)

1999 2000 2001 2002 2004 2006

desire for wage information on Internet detailed occupation wage data needed for research survey about work and wages in womens magazines launch womens WageIndicator website with web survey and Salary Check for 45 occupations launch websites for men, 40+, youth Salary Check for 400 occupations 400,000 web visitors per month in NL

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To other countries
2004 Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy, Poland, United Kingdom
(EU funding 6th Framework Program)

Hungary 2005 2006

(EU funding EQUAL fund)

Argentina, Brazil, Mexico India, S-Korea, S-Africa,

(funding NL development aid)

USA
(funding Harvard Law School)

2007

China, Russia, Sweden

(contracts about to sign)
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WageIndictator Foundation
The WageIndicator Foundation
owns the WageIndicator concept is a not-for-profit organization

Its mission statement

Share and compare wage information. Contribute to a transparent labor market. Provide free, accurate wage data through salary checks on national websites. Collect wage data through web surveys.

Founded in 2003 under Dutch law by

University of Amsterdam NL branch of the international career website Monster NL Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions (FNV)

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WageIndicator websites
2007 35 websites in 17 countries, most of them managed by web journalists extra websites for multilingual countries, for women, elderly workers, IT staff (India) thousands of links in other websites

Web visitors must trust

the information provided in a Salary Check (thus it must offer high quality information) volunteering their data in the survey receiving a response to visitors email Web-marketing is critical cooperation with media groups, career sites, trade unions, all with a strong Internet presence AIAS

Media parters and web-marketing

Worldwide partners
Career site Monster MSN Dutch World Service

Partners with established reputations

University of Amsterdam Erasmus of Rotterdam Harvard Law School Leading national newspapers and portals Gazeta Wyborcza (PL) El Pais (ES) La Nacion (AR) UOL (BR) Sueddeutsche (DE) Mail & Guardian (ZA) Etc.

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The survey
Target population: labor force
wage-earners in formal and informal economy self-employed, free lancers, home workers (with SEWA in India) Occupation (4 dgt ISCO), industry (4 dgt NACE), education, work history, wages, benefits, hours, personal questions completion takes approximately 20 minutes survey has parallel questions addressing rare groups in the labor force to prevent break-off optimization as for the number of characters, clicks and pages AIAS
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Questions on

Questionnaire

The technique
Questionnaire Management System QMS
developed for WageIndicator, using Open Source manages a multi-country, multi-lingual survey facilitates complicated routing, downloading codebooks and uploading languages includes a search tree application for questions on occupation, industry, region

Data storage
the data is securely stored on servers in USA, NL and India quarterly data releases AIAS
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Web traffic
Visits totals
2005: 4.5 million 2006: 7.8 million January 2007: > 800,000 Prognosis 2007: 10 million

Variation per country, some examples

NL: > 400,000/month (since 2001, household name) DE: > 100,000/month (since 2004, large population) BR/AR: 25,000/month (since 2006, well linked) ZA/IT/KR: < 1,000/month (weaker teams) AIAS
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The response(1)
2006
Total visits 7.8 million Fully completed questionnaires 158,000 Data for research and salary check 309,000 (2004-2006)

Response rate overall

3.85 % Large variation across countries Cross-country analysis of response rates
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The response(2)
Sample size (fully completed)
<2004 2004 2005 2006 2007 53,000 in NL 43,000 in 5 countries 135,000 in 11 countries 158,000 in 17 countries 250,000 in 19 countries (expected)

Data quality is good

hardly any click the first item only respondents item non-response usually < 5% very few multiple responding in 2007 a study on break-off respondents AIAS

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Respondent-side feedback
Feedback on the websites
visitors use the website for their decisions about schooling, occupational choice, wage negotiations, and job mobility we know from visitors email

Feedback on the survey

open-ended question If you have any comments on the questionnaire, please do so here passive feedback through break-off we want visitors to have fun in completing the questionnaire (and they report back that they do)
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Volunteer web surveys

Selection bias and Internet access worldwide Internet access rates are increasing fast this population is becoming more and more representative of the population at large it will boom with wireless access Selection bias in choice of website? web visitors can choose out of millions of websites only a minor part visits a WageIndicator website web traffic can be directed in number and in target group by means of web marketing Selection bias in completing the survey? 110 % of the web visitors completes the questionnaire (f.e. Finland 10 %) AIAS

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Findings on selection bias

In all countries
the small groups in the labor force are underrepresented, f.e. workers in small part-time jobs low educated are increasingly not underrepresented elderly workers 55+ are underrepresented gender representation varies across countries

In Netherlands 2002-2006
the underrepresentation of these socio-demographic groups has declined in the past years AIAS
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Coping with selection bias

Web marketing
addressing the target population at large sites for sub-populations otherwise not fully reached

Routing through the questionnaire

to prevent rare groups from break-off

Weighting with aggregate data

aggregate socio economic LFS data is used for weighting national WageIndicator data

Weighting with micro data

micro-data from representative surveys will be used to develop weights, using similar questions in WageIndicator, currently explored in the US

Weighting with a reference survey

using a small reference survey for weighting, currently S A I A explored in the Netherlands
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Volunteer web surveys are advantageous

because they can be held continuously
costs are not linear related to sample size investment costs are relatively large -> conducting a continuous survey is profitable for WageIndicator continuity is a prerequisite because of web marketing investments continuous surveys allow for temporary plug-in questions

because they can lead to large sample sizes

allows for analyses of sub-sets allows for presenting randomly items from a pool allows for questions addressing relatively small groups, thus acting as a screening device AIAS

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The research
Research community
increasing numbers of researchers use the data

On wages and working hours

cross-country wage differentials for occupations gender pay gap and the motherhood penalty modeling preferences for a change in working hours

On work place relations

attitudes towards collective bargaining coverage effect of dismissals on self-perceived job insecurity

On labor markets
the multi-dimensionality of the informal labor market within and across countries spill over effects of MNEs in local employment 18 AIAS

Is this new?
Yes, it is because
worldwide, neither high quality aggregate data nor micro-data about wages, bonuses, and working hours are available worldwide, WageIndicator is the first survey gathering wage data in so many countries worldwide, it is one of the first surveys using web marketing for scientific data collection

and because
the exchange of information from research to the public and from the public to research is not often seen AIAS

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A Global WageIndicator
The plan
a GlobalWageIndicator plan to enlarge the web operation to 75 countries in 5 continents inspired by the globalizing economy and the need for worldwide data on wages, currently not available jointly with International Labor Organization of the United Nations, Harvard Law School, University of Belgrano (AR), and Indian Institute of Management/Ahmedabad (India)

Its aims
contributing to a transparent labor market by providing reliable data about wages to a worldwide public collecting data for worldwide wage trend reports and for researching the impact of globalization 20 AIAS submitting plans to funding agencies in 2007

The role of ILO

Support for the 75-countries plan

Using the dataset for wage data or other data Input for funding options
post Soviet area Arab speaking world Sub-Saharan Africa
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Thank you for your attention

www.wageindicator.org

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