Keywords: Challenges of comparative research and International Survey Projects, cross-cultural concerns in data collection and measurement issues

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a cross-national social science survey programme with member countries around the globe running annual surveys on thematic modules. One of these thematic modules focuses on work orientations and on attitudes towards respondents’ work, work organization, working conditions, and work-life balance.
The ISSP has started to ask about work orientations in 1989 and replicated the module in 1997, 2005, and 2015. The most recent 2015 module was fielded in 37 countries. A 25 year observation period from 1989-2015 is possible for 6 countries; a 10 year observation period is possible for 24 countries.
The ISSP intends to replicate modules and parts of the associated items on a regular base to enable an cross-national comparison over time. With respect to this rule, the ISSP work orientation modules offer a valuable source for research on global societal change. In particular, the comparison of the two last ISSP work orientation modules of 2005 and 2015 allow for monitoring consistency and change before and after the financial crisis of 2008 on the basis of many items. The replicated items include a battery on work values and their importance to respondents. A battery on job characteristics, which was designed parallel to the work values, offers the chance for more cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Further items deal with job insecurity and how much respondents worry about losing their job. Trend analyses help to identify whether job insecurity might have changed due to the crisis. In addition, there are data on the preferred working situation and whether respondents would like to work more or less, on work-life balance and whether job and family life interfere with each other, and on the flexibility of working arrangements which reflects the modernization trends, e.g. of increased female labour participation, already happening in many societies. A distinctiveness of the work orientations module of the ISSP is the inclusion of respondents not working for pay. Those items have been introduced to the module of 1997 and their number was enlarged in 2015 to improve analytical opportunities in particular with respect to the unemployed, e.g., to learn about employability or strategies to find a job.
We will present descriptive results from the ISSP work orientation modules to give first insights into cross-national trends and the valuable resource the modules represents.