An Alternate to Survey Methods to Measure Work from Home

Abstract

La versión española de este artículo se puede encontrar en:http://ssrn.com/abstract=3694243.

During unprecedented times like COVID-19, when ‘social distancing’ is a new normal, knowing the jobs that can be performed from home is useful for policymakers and researchers. A most common way to estimate jobs that can be performed from home is by carrying out surveys, but this method is time and cost-intensive. Moreover, using US-based O*NET surveys to estimate work from home (WFH) index in a home country, other than the US, can potentially lead to large measurement errors. In this paper, we propose a rating based methodology to estimate the WFH index. The ratings are provided for occupation-wise work activities according to their likelihood of getting performed from home by experts. This method is time and cost-effective and can easily be replicated in any country accounting for indigenous reality. Using tools like Inter-Rater Reliability (IRR), which is extensively used in psychology literature, we attempt to create a robust index of WFH for India.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, Work from home; Inter-rater reliability; Agreement Coefficients; Ratings

JEL Classification: C1; J2; J6; J8