Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

This project adopts two main research instruments - two online questionnaires (2 surveys of circa 1400 UK ‘new’ homeworkers each, June-July 2020 & Dec-February 2021) distributed through social media and existing contacts such as Royal Bank of Scotland, PWC, St James’s Place Wealth Management, The Federation for Small Businesses, the TUC and STUC, and Scotland CANDO, as well as professional research services. The survey questions are included in the datasheet exactly as they appeared in the online survey. The second instrument is a series of semi-structed interviews (4 x Interviews with 80 ‘new’ homeworkers across UK, May 2020 – July 2021). The question guides used in the four rounds are included in the folders with the transcripts.The two surveys focus on the perception of productivity, employment security and psychological wellbeing. The surveys compare size and population of domestic space; those that typically homework and those for which it is a novel phenomenon; the difference for those that are carers as well as comparing experiences for men and women, by job, employment status; support by employing organisation (if relevant), socio-economic status, and health status including COVID-19 diagnosis. The survey has been undertaken twice – Summer and Winter survey, to effectively understand change over the period of the pandemic. The surveys take no more than 25 minutes to complete, to try to balance depth and response rate. The research team constantly monitored patterns of responses so that we could intervene and react quickly if we needed to broaden responses from particular groups. The second element focusses on the in-depth experiences of these new working arrangements. Using a stratified sampling method, to ensure representation across occupations, socio economic status, employment status and gender, the project recruited eighty participants who were interviewed remotely, for up to ninety minutes at a time, four times, over a year (three-month intervals). The interviews focussed on change during and after a period(s) of lockdown, including transformation in work, wellbeing and domestic arrangements (including home-schooling) and elder care. We asked about mechanisms for coping, impact on mental health and bearing on future aspirations. Interviewing across time periods allowed the exploration of developments or changes in the perspectives and experiences of the participants. We adopted a naturalistic approach, where participants are interviewed in their workspace as if they are undertaking their daily work so we could be aware of interruptions and distractions.