The research programme Finnish Local Government 2004 is a joint programme launched by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, universities and research centres. It is funded by Finnish municipalities and the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities. The project engages in a systematic and comparable analysis of the development of the municipal sector in 1995-2004. The 47 municipalities participating in the programme are representative of the Finnish local government sector.
The study programme comprises of 14 research modules. For most modules, data are collected through mail surveys. The data may be used for cross-sectional or time series analysis.
This is the third survey charting the quality of working conditions in municipal working communities. Degree of stress in respondents' job, changes in working pace, work load, wage level, nature of the job and career prospects were examined. Respondents were asked about job independence, degree of information on planned or decided changes in the work, support from the management or fellow employees.
The survey carried a set of statements relating to the respondent's working community and workplace relations. Workplace conflicts and the ways of dealing with them, relations with the supervisors and the characteristics and methods of the managers were examined. Some questions pertained to productivity, work motivation and methods for improving motivation. Competence and skills required by the respondent's job and job-related training were charted. Respondents evaluated the managers of their own sector with the help of paired concepts (for example enterprising vs. obstructing, co-operative vs. creates conflicts), rated the significance of certain factors causing productivity problems in their community and evaluated how good or bad the services of different sectors were in their own municipality. Finally, use of information technology at work and the importance of dealing with certain issues at negotiations between employers and personnel associations were investigated.
Background variables included the municipality where the respondent works, respondent's workplace, gender, year of birth, trade union membership, type of contract and whether the respondent held a managerial or supervisory position.
Two-stage stratified sampling in selecting project municipalities. Total study of the working communities, selected with judgement sampling.
The project municipalities were selected separately from those with less than 10,000 inhabitants (28 municipalities) and from those with more than 10,000 inhabitants (19 municipalities). The selection aimed to be representative within both groups of all municipalities with the same population size. Large municipalities were overly represented because 70 % of the Finnish population lives in large municipalities. Representativeness criteria included regional location, age and education of the population, industry structure, municipal economy parameters, political situation and variables related to municipal policy. The target group municipalities form a small scale model of all Finnish municipalities. The Åland Islands municipalities were excluded because of special features due to their autonomy.
The data consist of 392 work communities in 47 municipalities. The working communities were originally selected for the 1995 survey. In each municipality, a sample of similar working communities representing the sector's core activities was selected. Working communities include social, health, technical, educational and cultural services. Following the principles of panel surveys the questionnaire was sent to all members of the selected communities. The working communities are basically the same as in the 1995 survey.