If you spend some of your time working from home, or other members of your household do, we want to hear from you!
Our project team based at the University of Melbourne and Western Sydney University is conducting interviews with people to explore how working from home is changing people’s everyday work life, home life and social life—as well as the flow-on impacts on other household members and wider communities. These interviews will help us to evaluate whether working from home is sustainable for the households involved.
What is involved?
Should you agree to participate you will take part in an interview that will last about 40 minutes and will take place online via Zoom.
The interview style will be open-ended and conversational rather than a series of closed-questions.
Subject to your permission, we would appreciate recording the interview. If you would prefer not to be recorded, we will make brief notes of our conversation after the interview.
You will receive a small reimbursement of $50 as a token of our appreciation.
What we would like to find out about?
We are interested in learning about how sustainable digital remote work is for the households involved. We are interested in talking with you about the following themes:
Work activities: how and where work takes place in the home and beyond, and how this has changed relationships with colleagues and clients.
Household activities: activities and interactions with other household members and how these relationships have changed because of working from home.
‘Beyond-home’ activities: activities and travel that take place outside of the home but relate to domestic life (e.g., food shopping) and how relationships with broader social worlds have changed.
What are the benefits of taking part?
We anticipate that our project will benefit Australian society by providing new knowledge about an important but underexplored form of employment practice. Your input will provide us with new knowledge about how the positive and negative impacts of working from home practices are understood and managed from a household perspective.
While it is unlikely that you will personally benefit from participating in this research, your contribution will provide broader benefits to Australian society by helping us to better understand the changing nature of work, home and communities.
You will receive $50 for your participation in this study.
Do I have to take part?
No. Participation is entirely voluntary. You can decide to withdraw from the project at any time, and without reason. If you decide to withdraw, there will be no negative consequences, and your data will not be used.
Will I hear about the results of this project?
The final project outcomes will be available on this website. Findings will also be shared through academic papers and conferences. We can also send outcomes to you on request.
What will happen to information about me?
Unless you request to be identified, conversation will be de-identified. Unattributed quotes may be used in project outcomes. These include: conference papers; scholarly articles; summary reports for industry and government bodies; submissions to government and parliamentary inquiries and op-eds.
Reference made to any off-record topics of conversation in the project outcomes will be generalised to ensure that you will not be personally identifiable.
Even with de-identification, there is still a small risk that you might be identified by what you tell us. To manage those risks the following safeguards have been put in place:
If you mention something identifiable which cannot be de-identified or generalised, we will either seek further permission from you to use it or we will not use it at all.
You have the option to review, edit and veto the use of your transcript or parts of the transcript.
Only the three researchers of the Working from Home project team will have access to the transcripts, the sound recordings, and the notebooks which will be typed-up and safely stored in password-protected, encrypted files at the University of Melbourne and Western Sydney University, and kept for five years. After this time, the data will be securely erased. If a third-party is used to type up the interview, they will only have temporary access to the sound recording.
Who is funding this project?
This project is funded by the Australian Research Council via the Discovery Program (Grant # DP22012908).
Who can I contact if I have any concerns about this research?
This project has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of The University of Melbourne [Ethics Reference Number: 24131]. If you have any concerns or complaints about the conduct of this research project, which you do not wish to discuss with the research team, you should contact the Manager, Human Research Ethics, Research Ethics and Integrity, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010. Tel: +61 3 8344 1376 or Email: research-integrity@unimelb.edu.au. All complaints will be treated confidentially. In any correspondence, please provide the name of the research team or the name or ethics ID number of the research project.