The Indiana Survey of Workers in a Polarized Economy (ISWIPE)

The Indiana Survey of Workers in a Polarized Economy (ISWIPE) was a telephone survey of 972 Indiana workers in which they were asked questions about their jobs, employers, and attitudes about their work. The focus of the survey was on various experiences of job insecurity that workers had experienced, such as contingent work, layoffs, downsizing, organizational changes, part-time work, etc. Data were collected on these and other topics, including the hours of work, wages and fringe benefits, work experience and firm tenure, promotion opportunities, characteristics of employers, relations with coworkers and supervisors, union membership and social class position, marital status and family situation and sociodemographic characteristics such as education, age, gender, and race. Questions were also asked about a range of worker attitudes which have been important in previous research on work, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, substantive complexity, work autonomy, promotion equity, job entitlement, class consciousness and attitudes about unions. Data were also collected on the respondent's occupation, industry, city and county of residence, and zip code. Archival data from secondary sources were later matched to some of these characteristics and added to the file.

This study was supported by funding from the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University-Bloomington.