Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
This is a mixed-methods data collection. Researchers at Cardiff University, and the Business School, University of Plymouth, were funded by the ESRC from 2007-2011 to carry out a four-year study of Workplace Bullying and Harassment in Britain with Special Reference to Race and Ethnicity. This mixed-methods project comprised a large, representative survey and several in-depth organisational case studies. The quantitative element, the British Workplace Behaviour Survey, 2007-2008 (BWBS), is the most comprehensive survey of ill-treatment in the workplace so far undertaken in Britain. It collected detailed information on the incidence and correlates of unreasonable treatment, denigration and disrespect, and violence and injury in the workplace. A central element of the questionnaire used in the BWBS was a revised version of the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ) (Einarsen and Raknes, 1997) which asks about experience of 21 different types of ill-treatment. Interviews were carried out with a representative sample of British employees (and people who had been employees in the last two years). This provided information on workplaces and employees required for modelling the causes and correlates of ill-treatment, including behaviour which could be perceived as bullying and harassment. The achieved sample of 3,494 included a non-white/non-Christian boost. TNS BMRB were contracted to conduct the survey. (The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills later adopted the same methodology for their 2008/09 Fair Treatment at Work Survey (FTWS), held at the UK Data Archive under SN 6382.) In the qualitative phase, four organisational case studies, each comprising approximately 20 interviews with employees, were carried out in order to further illuminate the quantitative data provided by the BWBS. The participating organisations were an NHS trust, a logistics and communication organisation, a financial services company and an engineering company. These organisations were selected because they employed Human Resources professionals and had worker representation, contained workplaces of sufficient size and sufficient numbers of employees of various kinds, for example black and minority ethnic (BME) employees and those with disabilities or health problems. As well as the full case studies, the data collection includes a small number of interviews in a third sector organisation, producing 88 interviews in total. Further information may be found on the ESRC Workplace Bullying and Harassment in Britain with Special Reference to Race and Ethnicity award webpage. For the second edition (April 2014), the qualitative interview transcripts have been added to the data collection.
Main Topics:
Ill-treatment or negative behaviour at work; bullying; harassment; discrimination; workplace characteristics; employee characteristics.
Quota sample
The sample points were selected from those determined by TNS BMRB's own sampling system. See documentation for details.
Face-to-face interview
