Bases for Action by the Federal Center for Health Education 1995

Gainful employment and health. Smoking habits, use of alcohol and
medication. Topics: current employment status and status if not
employed; earlier employment; status if part-time employment;
professional position; employment in the civil service; limited terms
of employment; company size; length of employment; time worked each
week with and without overtime; arrangement of working hours, e.g. in
changing shifts; characterization of job as physically hard work
(scale); noise pollution and risk of accidents at work; computer use at
work and number of number of working hours on PC; frequency of work
accidents; change of employer or change of occupation due to health
reasons; length of unemployment in the last 10 years; opportunities to
determine personal pace at work; description of the demands on the
current workplace and the job (scale); work satisfaction; smoking
permitted at work; frequency of use of alcohol at work by respondent as
well as by colleagues; company courses on health questions and personal
participation or willingness to participate; emotional and physical
stress symptoms after work (scale); fear of the future, concerns and
problems in private, occupational and economic area (scale); daily time
budget for sleep; well-being after sleeping; adequate leisure time;
regularly eating in quiet or under pressure of time; participation in
diet; weight; height; type and extent of use of cigarettes, cigars and
pipe tobacco; age at starting use of tobacco; assessment of strength of
cigarettes smoked and preferred brand of cigarettes; frequency of
attempts to quit smoking; time until relapse to smoking; intents to
reduce smoking or stop entirely; assessment of the jeopardy to health
from smoking; wish on the part of other persons for an end to smoking;
designation of the persons expressing this wish to the respondent;
abrupt or gradual reduction of use of tobacco; most important reasons
to reduce use of tobacco; personal requests of smokers not to smoke;
premises and occasions in which one smokes passively; perceived
disturbance by smokers in the immediate vicinity; classification of the
jeopardy to health from smoking with daily smoking of 20, 10 or 5
cigarettes; detailed information on frequency and extent of use of
alcohol in form of beer, champagne as well as spirits; self-assessment
of increase in use of alcohol compared with the period two years ago;
most important reasons for reduction of use of alcohol; looking for
reduction of tension and relief in alcohol (scale); assessment of the
health dangers from consumption of a certain amount of beer, wine as
well as a certain amount of sprits; assessment of the physical and
psychological dangers from use of hashish, heroin and cocaine in
selected amounts; self-assessment of condition of health: frequency of
visits to the doctor in the last three months; hospital stays and
consultation of lay medical practitioners, nature healers or
homoeopaths; orientation on experts in evaluation of personal condition
of health; attitude to ´today´s medicine´ in view of solving the health
problems of the population; attitude to medical check-ups; perceived
overweight; sleeping only with sedatives; dependence on medication to
enhance performance; rejection of self-treatment; irritation about the
danger of smoking from contraditory statements; participation in a
medical check-up in the last 12 months; health-conscious behavior;
athletic activity and avoiding stress; type and extent of medications
used in the last three months; use of pain-killers, stimulants,
sedatives and antidepressants during work; characterization of
health-conscious persons by means of a scale; frequency of personal
participation in blood donations; regularity of participation in blood
donations; knowledge and willingness to participate in courses on
weight reduction, breaking the smoking habit, coping with stress, on
back exercises, physical fitness and addiction counseling; provider of
these courses; frequency of thinking about one´s own health (health
consciousness); information practices on health topics (scale);
personal opinion leadership in health questions; employment in the
public health system or education system; personal activity in youth
work; persons in the social surroundings employed in the public health
system; member in a self-help organization or a club that concerns
itself with health questions; member in a sport club; club membership;
number of persons to confide in; respondent as contact for other
persons with personal problems; those in need of help in household;
insured with compulsory or private health insurance; designation of the
health insurance company. As questionnaire to be filled out by the
respondent: specification of illnesses and complaints in the last three
months; frequency of psychological and somatic complaints. Demography:
sex; possession of durable economic goods; year of birth and month of
birth; school degree; vocational training; marital status; living
together with a partner; age and employment of partner; time worked
each week and professional position of partner; children and their age
group; number of economically dependent children in household; size of
household; number of employed persons in household; monthly net income
of household; citizenship; origins from the GDR or a foreign country;
possession of telephone answering device. Interviewer rating: type of
building; characterization of residential area; weekday of interview;
presence of other persons and their degree of relationship to
respondent; intervention of other persons in the interview; willingness
to cooperate and reliability of respondent. Also encoded was: length of
interview; date of interview; number of interview at the sample point;
number of personal and telephone contact attempts; sex of interviewer;
age of interviewer; interviewer school education.