Understanding Society User Support

Hi understanding society team,

I'm writing to query the coding of the items wkaut1, wkaut2, wkaut3, wkaut4, and wkaut5 in the understanding society survey. These items assess job autonomy, and the documentation suggests that, for they are coded such that 4 = none, 3 = a little, 2 = some, and 1 = a lot.

I found this information through the link below...

https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/dataset-documentation/variable/wkaut1

I'm wondering if there might actually be an error here. Theoretically autonomy should be positively correlated with mental health (which means that these items should be negatively correlated with mental health). However, I'm finding quite robust positive correlations between each of these items and the scghq1_dv variable, which captures mental health (around 0.1). This finding is a striking contrast to the job autonomy--mental health relationship that's been established in the literature (and that's demonstrated in other large scale panel surveys). So I'm wondering if there's an error in the documentation it's actually the case that 4 = a lot and 1 = none.

You're help is much appreciated!