SHIFT2HEALTH Focus Group Discussions and Individual In-depth Interviews with shift workers and managers: Metadata and Analysis Procedure

This dataset includes the metadata from the qualitative part of the SHIFT2HEALTH EU project (grant number 101080788; https://shift2health.eu). In this part, focus group discussions (FGDs) with shift workers and individual interviews (IDIs) with managers of shift workers were conducted to:

gain insights into shift workers' health and wellbeing, including their needs, expectations and recommendations for improvement within these topics with focus on drivers, barriers, opportunities, and facilitators for health-promoting behaviour (FGDs)

explore managers' perceptions of the health, wellbeing and health-related needs of shift workers in the workplace, and to learn about their experiences and ideas for practices aimed at improving employees' health (IDIs).  

Data were collected between July 2024 and March 2025 across five European countries: Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland. The study included industrial and healthcare workers, in total 173 participants.

The attached document is a compilation of materials used to conduct individual and focus group interviews and presents the basic characteristics of the participants. The document includes:

FGD and IDI guides: English version of guidelines for conducting the study. For this study purpose, the documents were translated into national languages.

FGD and IDI codebooks: Codes prepared a priori with their definitions for use in preliminary data analysis. Here, they are expanded with additional codes that emerged during the analysis.

Guide for Preparing Transcriptions for Coding & Coding Data from FGDs and IDIs: a document with information on how the coding with a priori codes should be done.

A guide for conducting a thematic analysis: a document presenting a step-by-step coding procedure with description of the key phases and relevant examples. 

The text also contains information about the average duration of FGDs/IDIs and format (online, in-person, or hybrid).