At the beginning of COVID-19 lockdown, we rushed to create an online questionnaire. We asked questions on the following topics: time-use, satisfaction with the division of unpaid work in the household, satisfaction with home-office, and mental health. The questionnaire was distributed between 20.04.2020 and 14.05.2020 via various channels such as mailing lists of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the Vienna Chamber of Labour, the Austrian Transport and Services Union Vida, Facebook and Twitter. It was completed in full by a total of 2,113 people. We would also like to take this opportunity and thank all participants!

Table 1 gives an overview of some important socio-economic characteristics of the participants. More than half of the questionnaires (54%) were answered by people living in Vienna.  In addition, a relatively large number of questionnaires were completed by people living in Lower Austria (14%) and Upper Austria (11%), while only a few participants were from the western provinces, such as Vorarlberg, Tyrol, and Salzburg. 60% of the participants are between 30 and 49 years old.

Another particularity of our data set is that more than 75% of the questionnaires were answered by women, while only 22% were answered by men.  65% of the respondents completed a tertiary degree. Unfortunately, we had difficulties reaching people whose highest education completed is lower than a tertiary degree. Thus, only 17% of the respondents completed maximum an apprenticeship, compulsory schooling or BMS (that is, a medium-level technical and vocational school).

At the time of the survey, the majority (about 80%) of the participating persons were employed, with 66% employed, 5% self-employed and 9% on short-time work; a large proportion of the participants worked entirely (51%) or partially (14%) from home at the point in time they filled the questionnaire.

Furthermore, 17% of the participants lived alone at the time of the survey, 29% lived in a common household with their partner, while 31% lived in a common household with their partner and at least one child under 15 years of age. 6% of the respondents are single parents. 18% of the respondents lived with other adults in other household forms (shared flats, multi-generational households) or with/without a partner and children over 15 years of age.

Thus, our data set is skewed towards women in employment with a tertiary degree, who were working from home at the time of the survey. Although our sample is not representative of the Austrian population, it does provide information for answering our important research questions.