Temporary work is characterized by heterogeneity which often refers to temporary employees’ different motives for accepting temporary employment. Previous research suggests that these motives may be an important element in explaining differences in temporary employees’ well-being. In many studies, motives are predominantly considered as a dichotomy between voluntary and involuntary temporary work, e.g. by asking whether the employee would prefer an open-ended contract or not. However, offering dichotomized response categories may easily lead to too narrow view on motives.
Focus of this presentation is to clarify to what extent do open-ended questions about temporary employees’ motives alter ones understanding about responses given to closed questions. The main question is whether motives should be understood in another way than as a dichotomy. Research is conducted by analyzing two sets of data collected from two Finnish universities in 2008. First dataset consist of a web questionnaire (N=1225) and the second dataset is an additional open-ended questionnaire (N=196). The former dataset is based mainly on closed questions including few open-ended response categories; the latter includes open-ended questions and it was collected from a group of web questionnaire respondents. Preliminary results indicate that open-ended questions on motives are answered in a somewhat different way, e.g. dichotomous motive seems not to be valid category since temporary work may be a voluntary and involuntary choice at the same time. The material addressed in this presentation forms part of my ongoing PhD project and is also a part of a Academy of Finland funded research project on temporary work.