Indikátor subjektivní kvality pracovního života

The methodological focus of this article is the empirical study of the
quality of working life and a description of a population survey instrument
developed by the author called the ‘subjective quality of working life indicator’
(SQWLI). The introduction contains a summary of the theoretical and empirical
principles that SQWLI is based on. It describes the basic (micro-, mezzo-,
and macro-) levels on which quality of working life can be measured and discusses
the problem of the duality of social phenomena consisting in objective
conditions and actors’ subjective perception of them. Based on this concept, it
identifi es what the SQWLI is intended to capture, specifi cally, the micro-level
aspect of how workers themselves subjectively perceive the quality of working
life. The author then proceeds to describe the structure of the research
instrument based on the attributes of working life that survey respondents
assess in terms of their importance and in terms of their own satisfaction with
them. The two-dimensionality of the instrument and its analytical applications
are also described here. Using examples of the basic levels of analysis
(aspects, domains, indices) the author also demonstrates how the validity and
reliability of the instrument were tested. The article closes with a discussion
that raises some question areas that under certain circumstances may make
the application of the instrument problematic, in particular the question of the
scope of the instrument, correlations between the dimensions of satisfaction
and importance, and the possible applications of the instrument outside the
large cross-sectional surveys for which it was primarily designed.