Questionnaire Text

Questionnaire form view entire document:  text  image
Occupational Characteristics

Only for those 12 years of age and older [applies to questions 14 to 19]


Items 15 - 18 are only for "employed" and "unemployed"


15. Occupation

Write the principal occupation during the month of March, 1963. If "unemployed" ask and write the last occupation. Examples: musician, doctor, teacher, agricultural laborer, lawyer, bricklayer, etc.

____

Questionnaire instructions view entire document:  text  image

Occupational Characteristics

Ask these questions only to persons 12 years old or older.

This part of the form joins many interesting aspects relative to the occupation of the individuals. By means of these six questions it will be able to be known where and in what the Costa Rican population works, how many are employees, employers or exclusively students; how many women work only in the house, and much more information.

Logically to arrive at obtaining comparable information, all the enumerators should follow the norms and established definitions.


Line No. 15.-Occupation

Ask this question only for "Employed" or "Unemployed".

Write down in this space the word or expression that describes clearly the nature of the job that a person did during the reference period (March 1963). When a person has had more than one job in this period ask and write down the principle one, or that is the one which reported the largest wages.

Write down words and definitions that define the nature of the job in a precise form; for example: farm worker, carpenter's aid, street salesperson, civil engineer, lawyer, cashier, nurse, sanitary inspector, carpenter, mason, teacher.

Avoid the use of generic terms such as: worker, aid, owner, day laborer, etc., which say nothing about nature or class of work that a person did during the period of reference, which is what is wanted.

When it concerns "Unemployed", ask and write down the last occupation the person had, it does not matter how long ago it was.

Keep in mind that here what you should write down is the occupation and not profession. Of course, it can happen, and it is very frequent, that both (occupation and profession) coincide; but also it can happen that they do not; for example: it is common that doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. work in the same profession; nevertheless also it is frequent that a Doctor is the Administrator of a hospital, or an Engineer the Manager of a company; cases in which the occupation of a person does not coincide with their profession.

[p. 52]

It is evident that in the last two examples, the occupation of the doctor is "Administrator" and that of the engineer is "Manager". Because of this is, precisely, why the enumerator should ask for the occupation, and in the case of professionals, insist more from the person to determine if the profession or occupation coincides, that is to say, if the doctor works as a doctor, the lawyer as a lawyer, engineer as engineer, etc.