Study title

Welfare and Services in Finland is a panel survey that combines telephone and face-to-face interviews, postal surveys and register data. The aim of the study is to offer up-to-date, reliable and extensive research data on Finnish welfare and the use of welfare services. The topics in this collection round, which was aimed at families with children, included family composition, work and family, work-life balance, economic circumstances, parenthood, intergenerational relationships, health, services and support networks, and childhood. Data were collected through postal survey. Family composition was surveyed with questions about the persons living with the respondent, years of birth and genders of children, time lived with spouse, changes in the family composition in the previous 12 months, living arrangements of children from previous marriage/relationship, and child support. Relating to work and family, the questions presented probed the respondents' possibilities for working flexitime and to choose where they work, multiple jobs worked and overtime done in the previous 12 months, and work done at home. Further questions surveyed the relationship between work and family requirements, difficulties in doing different things related to work (e.g. working at night) because of family reasons, decrease in time spent with family and friends because of work, absences from work because of a child's sickness, reactions at the workplace to such absences, work-related things given up for family or vice versa, and who was responsible of household chores. With regard to economic circumstances, the respondents were asked whether they were able to save money and pay their expenses, how they thought the economic circumstances of the household would develop in the near future, and whether the household could afford certain things (e.g. give children a weekly allowance). The questions about parenthood surveyed feelings and experiences related to parenting, knowledge and concern...