Collaborative Research: Continuity and Change in Remote Work

For millions of U.S. workers, the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a new era of remote work, which has shifted irreversibly the culture and technologies of work. This project will investigate continuities, changes, and disparities in remote work and its effects on quality of life. It will study workers’ preferences for remote work, how people adapt to working remotely, and how remote work affects workers’ well-being.

The research will illuminate inequalities in remote work by considering varied experiences across life-course stages, educational levels, and demographic backgrounds. This project aims to provide decision-makers with strategic insights into the expectations and preferences of the American workforce, and to help employers optimize remote work arrangements.

The project will field three new survey waves drawing from a nationally representative survey of 3,023 Americans who worked remotely in some form after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The three survey waves build on a baseline survey fielded in October 2020. Respondents are drawn from KnowledgePanel, the largest probability-based online panel in the U.S.

The survey combines widely used scales that measure working conditions, well-being, and worker preferences, with open-ended questions designed to capture workers’ experiences of working from home and returning to in-person work. The study will track population trends in remote work across various subgroups. Researchers will also use multivariate regression models to examine continuities, changes, and disparities in respondents’ working conditions, quality of life, and adaptive strategies.

The findings will inform sociological theories of work, health and wellbeing, and social and economic inequalities.

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.