Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
Carried out every four years, the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) examines both the objective circumstances of European citizens' lives and how they feel about those circumstances and their lives in general. It collects data on a range of issues, such as employment, income, education, housing, family, health and work-life balance. It also looks at subjective topics, such as people's levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and perceived quality of society. By running the survey regularly, it has also become possible to track key trends in the quality of people's lives over time. Previous surveys have shown, for instance, that people are having greater difficulty making ends meet since the economic crisis began. In many countries, they also feel that there is now more tension between people from different ethnic groups. And across Europe, people now trust their governments less than they did before. However, people still continue to get the greatest satisfaction from their family life and personal relationships. Over the years, the EQLS has developed into a valuable set of indicators which complements traditional indicators of economic growth and living standard such as GDP or income. The EQLS indicators are more inclusive of environmental and social aspects of progress and therefore are easily integrated into the decision-making process and taken up by public debate at EU and national levels in the European Union. The time series dataset enables the study of quality of life over 4 waves of the EQLS from 2003-2016. Further information about the survey, including questionnaires and technical reports, can be found on the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) EQLS webpages. For the third edition (March 2018), the data file has been updated to include data from the fourth EQLS completed in 2016. A new Read Me file has also been provided and users are advised access the questionnaire and technical report from the Eurofound EQLS 2016 webpages.
Main Topics:
The EQLS covers a range of issues, such as employment, income, education, housing, family, health and work-life balance. It also looks at subjective topics, such as people's levels of happiness, how satisfied they are with their lives, and how they perceive the quality of their societies.
Multi-stage stratified random sample
See documentation for details
Face-to-face interview
