The CHANGE Survey
Working as self-employed, on a temporary contract, part-time, or combining several jobs is increasingly common in Belgium. For many of these workers, income does not arrive in a steady monthly amount: it rises and falls with turnover, contracts, hours or clients. The CHANGE Survey asks what that instability means for everyday life.
Between December 2025 and July 2026, 1554 people in Belgium took part. They told us about their work situation, how predictable their income is, the strategies they use to bridge lean months, and what this means for their household's standard of living: from making ends meet and saving to housing and financial peace of mind.
The survey was designed at KU Leuven, in collaboration with the University of Antwerp and the Université libre de Bruxelles, as part of the CHANGE project funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO). It builds on earlier qualitative work in the project: interviews with tax and accounting professionals, and in-depth interviews with self-employed and non-standard workers. Wherever possible we used questions from established surveys, including EU-SILC, the Labour Force Survey and the European Working Conditions Survey - so that our findings can be compared with existing research.
Respondents were recruited through organisations representing self-employed and non-standard workers, and through social media. The sample is therefore not representative of the Belgian population; it is a deliberate, targeted sample of a group that standard surveys reach poorly.
Documentation
We publish two files so that anyone can see exactly what was asked, how the questionnaire was built, and how the answers are distributed.
- ​: the full documentation report. It covers the design of the questionnaire and the sources of the items, sampling and recruitment, pilot testing, the list of variables, and the sample distributions for every question. The complete questionnaire is included as an annex.
- ​: the same variables in a workable spreadsheet: one row per variable, with the question wording, answer codes, question type and the source each item was drawn from. Useful if you want to filter, search or work with the structure of the data directly.
For questions about the survey or access to the data, contact Lien Steyaert (lien.steyaert@kuleuven.be) or Wim Van Lancker (wim.vanlancker@kuleuven.be).