1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«[T]he goal of this research note is to evaluate the nature and quality of the information on work interruptions and parental leaves collected in retrospective surveys.» (p. 32)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Pour mener leur étude, les auteures utilisent le «Living in Canada Survey - Pilot (LCS)» (p. 32) «The original sample comprised nearly 4,000 respondents who were living in approximately 1,600 households selected in four Canadian provinces (New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and Saskatchewan).» (p. 33)

Instruments :
Questionnaire

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

À la lumière de leur recherche, les auteures constatent que «roughly only half of mothers who mentioned taking a parental leave of at least seven months also reported a corresponding jobless episode when later asked about their work history in another section of the questionnaire. This high level discrepancy might have serious repercussions when analysing the effects of job interruptions on different aspects of individuals’ lives using retrospective data. » (p. 40) «As expected, the likelihood that women who mentioned an at least seven-month long parental leave also reported a corresponding work interruption was shown to be positively linked to the duration of the parental leave. Furthermore, lone mothers at the time of birth were found to be more likely to report the job interruption.» Ils concluent que «[i]n retrospective surveys, collecting information on parental leaves within parental histories (i.e., when collecting information on each biological, adopted or step-child reported by respondents) most likely constitutes a better strategy to measure the use of parental leaves than doing so through work histories, because giving birth and raising children constitute significant events in respondents’ lives.» (p. 41)