Research questions

De Witte et al. (2010) investigated the association of employee’s perception of quantitativeand qualitative jobinsecurity with jobsatisfaction, and psychologicaldistress in the Belgiumbanking sector.

Job insecurity is defined as the employees’ concernsabout their work-related future. There are two kinds of job insecurities, thequantitative job insecurity and the qualitative job insecurity. The quantitative job insecurityis about the threat to the continuation of the job in the future. The qualitative job insecurityis about threat to the various valued aspects of the job, such as jobcontent or working conditions.

Data collection and respondents

Intotal, there were 69,000 employees working in the 63 Belgian banks affiliatedto the sector’s joint industrial committee in 2001. As questioning allemployees would be too expensive, the researchers decided to survey a sample of15,000 employees (roughly 21%).

Allthe 63 banks participated in the survey. About 21% of employees in each bank wereinvited to participate in the survey. Within each bank, the respondents wereselected at random with no particular quota for gender, age or employee level.The survey was based on addresses which had been provided by the banks (name,language, address) and each randomly selected employee received a personalizedenvelope through regular mail, sent to him/her by the employer. The completedquestionnaire needed to be returned (free of charge) through the internal postwithin each bank. The researchers travelled to each bank to collect thecompleted survey.

The sample was representative for employees in the banking sector,however, not for the total working population. More men (58.5 percent) thanwomen (41.5 percent) participated. About two in three respondents were between35 and 44 years old or between 45 and 54 years old, while about one in four wasbetween 25 and 34 years old. Only a minority (4 percent) was younger than 24 orolder than 55. Most respondents had an education beyond high school (63.9percent), had partners with an income and children (72.4 percent), and workedfull-time (85 percent). There were about as many white-collar workers (54.4percent) as executives (45.6 percent).

Measures

Quantitative job insecuritywas measured with four items developed by De Witte (2000) on a scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Sample items were “I feel insecureabout the future of my job”’ and “I am sure that I will be able to keep my job”(reverse coded). Reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) equalled .89.

Qualitative job insecuritywas measured with ten items from the 17 item measure that was originallyproposed by Ashford, Lee, and Bobko (1989).These job features concerned four broad dimensions previously distinguished todescribe the various characteristics of a job: job content (autonomy, skillutilization, and specific tasks), working conditions (workload and quality ofworking conditions), employment conditions (wage, working hours, andopportunities for promotion), and social relations at work (relations withcolleagues and supervisors, respectively). Respondents had to indicate whethereach of the job features would likely improve or deteriorate in the near future(1 = strongly deteriorate; 5 = strongly improve). We recoded the items so thata high score reflected qualitative job insecurity. Cronbach’s alpha equalled.87.

Job satisfactionwas measured with one item: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your currentjob?” (1 = very dissatisfied; 5 = very satisfied).

Psychological distress was measured with the12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg,1978). A sample item was “Haveyou recently lost much sleep over worry?” Responses varied from 1 (“less thanusual”) to 4 (“much more than usual“). Reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was .89.

Control variables. Thefollowing social demographics and work-related factors were included: gender (0= men; 1 = women), age (1 = 18–24; 2 = 25–34; 3 = 35–44; 4 = 45–54; 5 = 55+),education (0 = no education beyond high school; 1 = education beyond high school),extra income (0 = no partner with extra income; 1 = partner with extra income),children (0 = no children; 1 = children), occupational position (0 =white-collar worker; 1 = executive), working hours (0 = part-time; 1 =full-time). The demographics were used as controlvariables in data analysis.

Instructions for answering the questions

Use at least four academic sources inEnglish to answer the questions. The sources can be books or peer reviewedjournal articles or a combination of both books and peer reviewed journalarticles. The academic sources as well as responding to the questions will be around2000 words in total.

Q1: Sample size

The sample size for this study is fifteen thousandemployees selected from a total of 69,000 bank employees (about 21% of theemployees). Is a sample of this size necessary? Give your reasons.

Q2: Sampling method

Whatis the current method of sampling? What are the advantages and disadvantages ofthe current sampling method?

Q3: Measures of variables

Give your commentson the reliability and validity of measures of the variables.

Q4: Collection of data on social demographics

The purpose of this research is to find the associationsbetween quantitative and qualitative job insecurity and well-being. However,data on variables such as gender, age, educationlevel, extra income were also collected. What is the purpose of collecting dataon variables such as gender, age, educational level etc.?

Q5: Research design

What researchdesign is used for current research? What are the positive and negative side ofthe current research design?

Hints

A population consists of everything being studied to draw useful inferences. Populations are generally large in size. A random sample based on which one draws inferences is taken from a population.

A stratified sampling is a technique in which the entire population is divided into relatively homogeneous subgroups or strata, and the final units are selected randomly from these strata’s.

For example, A church has 600 women and 400 men as members. A stratified random sample of size 30 would include a simple random sample of 18 women from the 600 women and another simple random sample of 12 men from the 400 men.

The sample design is a procedure drawn before any data are collected to obtain a sample from a given population. It is also known as a sampling plan.