Title: cor851-empl
Author: Carl Frederick
Company: Univ of Wisc-Madison

GEMPL – Employment Details and Summary

OVERVIEW

In the 1992-1993 wave, data was collected on up to two jobs in each of up to four employment spells.  In 2003-2005, we collected information on up to two jobs in each of up to eight employment spells that respondents held since they were last interviewed; 1992-1993 for the great majority of them and 1975 for those that did not respond to the 1992-1993 wave.  The employment spells were collected in the following order (see Employment flowchart for more detail):

•	Respondents who were currently employed at the last interview were asked to confirm that they worked with that employer.  If they did, data on the first or only job was pulled from previous data from the last or only job at the current employer.
•	Respondents who did not confirm were asked about the job they held at the time of the last interview.
•	Respondents who were not employed at the previous interview were asked about the first employment spell they held for six months or longer
•	Respondents who had not had an employment spell of six months or longer were asked about an employment spell at which they were currently working
•	Respondents who did not meet any of these criteria are coded -2 for the entire employment section.
•	Respondents who met one of these requirements were asked about their first seven employment spells since they were last interviewed and if they had more than seven they were asked to skip to the current or most recent employment spell for the eighth spell.

The second major difference is that the instrument was set up to collect job data in a roster form – i.e. the respondent was asked the same roster of questions about each employment spell.  While this does not change the order or manner in which questions are asked, it did present some problems that are discussed below.

After the roster of employment history details, respondents were asked more detailed questions about a selected employer.  The selected employer was the current or last employer for each respondent.  In addition to the job detail questions in the previous wave, respondents were asked about disabilities that affected them on or off the job and whether they have received disability benefits.

The variable about union membership (gf023jcc) was in the employment module in the previous wave.  Now it is asked in the job characteristics section (see cor850.rtf)

BRIEF VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS

   Non-Rostered

	gf001js		pattern of employment spells (see Cor 782)

gf002js – gf046js	summary variables describing employment history, current work status, overlapping jobs, and availability of pensions and health insurance

gf601re – gf605re	most severe disability

gf651re – gf655re	second most severe disability

gf701re – gf705re	disability benefits

Rostered (the variable names end j1_  for the first employer spell, j2_  for the second … jp_ for the pre-retirement job and jc_ for the job details job

	gf001j1c – gf002j1c	start and end dates of employment spell

	gf104j1c – gf004j1c	hours worked and full time status for first/only job

gfu07j1d - gf020j1e	occupation, industry, class of worker, occupational prestige and status scores for first only job

gf026j1c – gf126j1c	pension availability and participation

gf027j1c – gf128j1c	health insurance availability and participation

gf030j1c	did Respondent ever have a change in job duties within employer

gf031j1d	date Respondent changed duties

gf132j1c – gf032j1c	hours worked and full time status for last/only job

gf041j1e – gf047j1f     occupation, industry, occupational prestige and status scores for last/only job

gfu50j1d – gf063j1c	reasons r left employment spell

gf064j2	date overlapping job becomes main job (only in second through seventh spells)

gf065j1c	is first employer spell the same as previously recorded current job? (first spell only)

gf070jcd - gf072jcd	job details section – number of employees at job details employer and whether Respondent remained at job for health insurance (job details spell only)

CODING

   Occupation and Industry codes

Occupation and industry codes were coded by specially trained coders to be compatible with the 1990 definitions that were used in the previous wave.  Major industry and occupation codes are assigned according to Cor 681.  The occupational prestige, occupational education, and occupational income scores were assigned in exactly as they were in the 1992/93.  The current code is displayed in cor863.sas.  Also see Cor 680 and 683 for the Nakao-Treas prestige score, Cor 639 and Cor 684 for details, and a recommended	transformation of the occupational education and occupational income scores from the 1992/3 documentation.

  Class of Worker codes
	
A series of three questions was used to identify the respondents’ class of worker code (b81q40, b81q45, b81q55).  On the whole these three questions were unproblematic.  However, the first question in the series included an ‘other-specify’ option despite the fact that the other options were exhaustive (did you work for government, private company/organization, self-employed, work in a family business).  This required us to assign the correct code based on the comments in the other-specify option.  Most of the time it was straightforward to do this based on the name of their employer.  Two recurring confusing situations were, people who worked for non-profit organizations and were not sure if they are included in private organizations (they are) and people who work for public corporations in the sense of that they were publicly traded in stock markets (also included in the second category).  In ambiguous cases, we used the following decision rules to do this:
•	If the respondent was reporting on the same job they held at the time of the last survey, we used that response in the current survey.
•	If a person reported being self-employed in a family business we assigned them a code of ‘3 – self-employed’.
•	In cases where it was unclear to the respondent if it was government or not (especially for school and hospital employees), we conducted an internet search to try and resolve it and only assigned a code if the institution remained public or had definitely been private at the time the respondent worked there.
•	If the correct response remained ambiguous after all of these steps we set the code to ‘-4 – not ascertained’.

   Retirement reasons gf062j1c  - gf362j1c
	
The code set for retirement reasons was developed from the responses.  Up to four responses are coded in the order given per respondent.  The codes fall into five major categories:  job/work reasons (1-19), financial reasons (20-29), personal reasons (30-49), health reasons (50-69), and other (70-79).  See cor851a.rtf for a thorough definition of the codes and examples.

   Reason laid off
	
The code set for reason the respondent was laid off was also developed from the responses.  There codes fall into 4 major categories: individual level reasons (1-9), firm level reasons (10-19), economy level reasons (20-29), and other reasons (30-39).  See cor851b.rtf for a thorough definition of codes and general guidelines. 

   Reason left job

The code set for reason the respondent left their job was developed from responses.  There are four major categories of the codes: voluntary work related reasons (0-19), voluntary non-work related reasons (20-39), involuntary work related reasons (40-59), and involuntary non-work related reasons (60-79).  See cor851c.rtf for a list of these codes.
 
Explanation of Flags (gf035js-gf042js)

A series of flags (empflg1, empflg2, empflg3, empflg4, empflg5, empflg6, empflg7, empflg8 - corresponding to the final variables gf035js, gf036js, gf037js, gf038js, gf039js, gf040js, gf041js, gf042js) were established to denote major corrections made to some cases.  The final digit in the flag name corresponds to the job spell in which the correction was made.  Each empflg can take on four values, 0 through 3.  A 0 denotes that no major corrections were made to the job spell, a 1 signifies that a serious correction was made to the job spell, a 2 denotes that the job spell was deleted, and a 3 indicates that a valid job spell was treated as an invalid job by the interviewer.  A more in depth description of values 1 and 2 is available below.

empflgX=1
Flags with a value of 1 indicate that a serious correction was made to the job spell.  Four types of corrections fall into this category, and these include combining job spells, adding job spells, moving job spells, and corrections made due to instrument limitations.

Combining job spells is necessary when two or more job spells were reported that actually constitute only one job.  One job means that it is the same employer and that the job was continuous.  Instances requiring this type of correction include: union jobs, companies that changed ownership, and companies that change names. 
 
Adding job spells is necessary when the respondent mentions more than one job within a single job roster.  

Moving job spells is necessary when the respondent reports job spells in the wrong order, and it is also often necessary after combining job spells, adding job spells, or deleting job spells.  

The instrument only allows for 8 job spells.  If a respondent asks the interviewer to change a previous item, backing up during the rostered employment section can lead to instrument errors.  These instrument limitations sometimes resulted in missing a job spell, and job spells added due to these limitations are flagged as serious corrections as well.

empflgX=2
Flags with a value of 2 indicate that a job spell was deleted from the employment roster.  There will be no information reported within the job spell that is flagged with a 2.  A 2 denotes that information was originally reported within that particular job spell, but was deleted due to collapsing job spells, moving job spells, or removing job spells.  A job deletion flag will usually be paired with a serious correction flag, unless the job spell that was deleted was the last job spell discussed in the respondent's employment history.  If the job spell that needs to be deleted is not the last job spell discussed, the job spells following it will be moved forward in the roster.  Each job spell that is moved forward will be flagged as a serious correction (empflgX=1), leaving at least the last originally reported job spell empty.  This empty job spell will be flagged as a deleted job spell (empflgX=2).

Example 
 A respondent originally reports 4 job spells with the given years below: 
Job 1	1994-2000
Job 2	1996-2001
Job 3	1997-1999
Job 4	2001-2004
Because job 3 was completely contained within job 4 with respect to time, job 3 will be deleted.  The information that was reported in job spell 3 is deleted, and the information that was once in job spell 4 has been moved to job spell 3. Flags for this case are as follows:
empflg1=0	No serious corrections
empflg2=0	No serious corrections
empflg3=1	Serious correction - job spell moved
empflg4=2	Job spell was deleted

PROBLEMS

While overall successful, the roster collection technique introduced some interesting data problems.  Occasionally, respondents would report jobs out of order, combine two employment spells or report one employment spell in two roster spots.  Instead of backing out and correcting the problem, sometimes the interviewers would note the problem and then skip to the rest of the questions in a section and start over at the next job.  Problems of this sort required us to reconstruct the job roster.  We only changed the raw data when it was definitively clear that the change was necessary.  All such corrections are documented in cor851d.sas which is extracted directly from the analytic variable creation file (CONTAINS ULTRA-PRIVATE INFO AT THIS POINT).  

We have created a system of flags indicating if changes made at each roster spot in this way in variables gf035js – gf043js.  Code definitions are indicated in the variable notes in the codebook.  Serious corrections fell into two major categories.  In the first type, respondents reported two employer spells as one so we had to add another job into the roster.  The opposite occurred in the second type, respondents reported 2 consecutive employment spells with one employer.  Most often this was a case of respondents reporting jobs not employers.  Corrections deemed ‘not serious’ include those that did not alter the structure of the roster.  For example, correcting a single variable or a few variables because of information recorded as interviewer notes.

Codes 2 and 3 are fairly self explanatory.  Code 2 was used when people reported volunteer work and the interviewer mistakenly identified the job as in the labor force.  In this case the dates of the volunteer post are kept as they would have been had the interviewer not made a mistake but the rest of the data is deleted and any subsequent employment spells are moved, i.e. spell 3 becomes 2, 4 becomes 3 etc…  The data as collected still exist in the raw dataset.  Code 3 is more problematic.  In this case, interviewers treated valid jobs as invalid.  In this case, we inserted this job spell into the appropriate roster spot and set all the variables to -4 where appropriate to indicate that these data are missing due to interviewer error.

We also had to correct the class of worker codes (gfu07j1c, etc…) if the respondent responded with the open ended choice.  Since the existing categories are exhaustive, all respondents were recoded back into one of the six categories.

PEOPLE
	
Erin Ruel – employment group coordinator, supervising variable creation, supervising raw data corrections, supervising open ended coding

Carl Frederick – employment history variable creation, correcting raw data, supervising open ended coding, writing the cor
	
JeongHwa Ho – employment summary variable creation, correcting raw data
	
Erin Wicke – open ended coding, correcting raw data

Sarah Bernhardt – open ended coding
	
Rachel Malec – disability coding
	
Evan Sherlock – disability coding
	
Kamil Sicinski – Health insurance and pension pattern variables
	
Brendan Day – Employment Pattern Variable, coding of employment module in Cases instrument

O&I coders ???

REFERENCES

Disabilities are coded to ICD9 codes using "International 
    	Classification of Diseases 9th Revision Clinical Modification: 
ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes" (Volumes 1 & 2). Washington, D.C.: U.S. 
    	National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), 1998.

1990 Census Detailed Occupation and Industry codes:  "1990 Census of Population and Housing Classified 
    	Index of Industries and Occupations."  1990 CPH-R-4, 1992.
        
   	1990 Occ Ed and Occ Inc scores: Hauser, Robert M. 
    	and John Robert Warren.  1997.  "Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations:  
    	A Review, Update, and Critique."  Pp. 177-298 in _Sociological 
    	Methodology_, edited by Adrian Raftery. Cambridge: Blackwell.

   	1989 Nakao-Treas Prestige Rating: Nakao, Keiko and Judith 
   	Treas.  1994.  "Updating Occupational Prestige and Socioeconomic 
   	Scores: How the New Measures Measure Up."  Pp. 1-72 in _Sociological 
    	Methodology, 1994_, edited by Peter Marsden. Washington, D.C.: American 
    	Sociological Association.