RAPID: Remote Work in the Time of COVID-19

COVID-19大流行改变了开展工作的地方。为了应对许多州强制要求的呆在家里的命令，能够这样做的美国工人花了一些时间远程工作。这种在家工作的突然激增，加上儿童保育设施的关闭和转向在线教育，代表了工作条件和家庭生活的巨大变化，实际上是一个大规模的社会实验。为了开始了解这一真实的社会实验，该RAPID项目将收集定量和定性数据，以推动科学发展，并围绕三个目标制定政策。首先，该项目将调查远程工作的经验和技术，包括性别，年龄/生命过程阶段，社会经济地位和种族/民族的差异。其次，该项目将研究工作需求，工作资源和生活质量之间的关系，包括对远程工作的战略适应以及工作资源对某些群体的重要性。第三，该项目将从工人的偏好和战略适应方面研究COVID-19后在家工作的可持续性。关于工作、家庭和个人层面以及技术机制的证据及其对不同生命阶段的女性和男性的相对重要性，将有助于组织制定有效的干预措施，帮助员工更好地适应COVID-19危机引发的远程工作的风险和可能性。这些研究结果将为未来制定和实施21世纪新工作设计的组织干预和监管对策奠定基础，从而促进美国经济竞争力。 该RAPID项目将启动一项具有全国代表性的2,000名远程工作者样本的基线调查，同时还将通过Amazon Mechanical Turk（MTurk）从500名远程工作者那里收集定性数据。在线基线调查的受访者将从美国最大的基于概率的在线小组KnowledgePanel中抽取。同时，将通过MTurk招募500名远程工作人员，以完成关于他们远程工作经验的开放式面试时间表。多方法数据将促进对工作和技术使用的变化性质的理解，雇主采用新的策略来监控工人，与远程工作相关的斗争和利益，以及员工对新工作条件的战略反应。拟议设计和实施的全国代表性调查，连同从MTurk收集的文本数据，将提供有关COVID-19爆发背景下工人工作经历和生活的原始、实时和动态经验证据。总之，研究结果将告知在哪里，何时以及如何完成工作的社会组织中的持久不平等的理论，以及社会和组织变革的理论。这项研究还将阐明社会破坏与不断发展的通信技术相结合如何成为思维方式和社会变革的深刻变革的催化剂，特别是关于未来的工作灵活性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed where work is done. In response to stay-at-home orders mandated in many states, U.S. workers able to do so have spent some time working remotely. This sudden spike in working from home, combined with the closing of childcare facilities and the move to on-line schooling, represents a sea change in working conditions and family lives, effectively a large-scale social experiment. To begin to understand this social experiment unfolding in real time, this RAPID project will collect quantitative and qualitative data to advance science and inform policy development around three objectives. First, the project will investigate the experiences of remote work and technologies enabling it, including disparities by gender, age/life-course stage, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. Second, the project will examine the relationships between work demands, work resources, and quality of life, including strategic adaptations to remote work and the importance of work resources for certain groups. Third, the project will examine the sustainability of working from home post COVID-19 in terms of workers’ preferences and strategic adaptations. Evidence on the work-, family-, and individual-level as well as technological mechanisms and their relative importance for women and men at different life stages will help organizations to develop effective interventions to help workers better adapt to the risks and possibilities of remote work jumpstarted by the COVID-19 crisis. These findings will lay the groundwork for future organizational interventions and regulatory response in developing and implementing new work designs for the 21st century, thus promoting U.S. economic competitiveness. This RAPID project will launch a baseline survey with a nationally representative sample of 2,000 remote workers, while also collecting qualitative data from 500 remote workers through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Respondents for the online baseline survey will be drawn from the KnowledgePanel, the largest probability-based online panel in the U.S. Concurrently, 500 remote workers will be recruited through MTurk to complete an open-ended interview schedule regarding their remote work experiences. The multi-method data will promote understanding of the changing nature of work and technology use, novel tactics employers adopt to monitor workers, struggles and benefits associated with remote work, and employees’ strategic responses to the new working conditions. The proposed designing and fielding of a nationally representative survey, together with the textual data collected from MTurk, will provide original, real-time, and dynamic empirical evidence of workers’ work experiences and lives within the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. Together, findings will inform theories of enduring inequalities in the social organization of where, when, and how work is accomplished, as well as theories of social and organizational change. This study will also illuminate how a social disruption in combination with evolving communication technologies may act as a catalyst for profound transformations in mindsets and social change, specifically regarding future work flexibility.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.