I was chosen to have an interview at E-Quality with two of their ‘beleidsmedewerkers’. After the interview I had to write something and make something in Excel. I didn’t finish the Excel, because I wasn’t happy with the lay-out of the graphs and tables. They told me I was the one who made the most of Excel and based on that and my writings I was chosen. A few days later I started as a ‘projectmedewerker’ and a lot of interns were also starting at the same time.
I was at first assisting one of the ‘beleidsmedewerkers’ with Excel, SPSS and literature research. The field was new to me, but very interesting and I absorbed all the information. The fields I worked on where sports, ‘kinderopvang’, ‘AOW’, ‘pensioenen’, elections, work, poverty, etc. In all these fields gender and ethnicity had to be taken into account. I was also detached to NGR (De Nederlandsche GezinsRaad) to interview families in Rotterdam and help with coding of the interviews.
For Sports I used the Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau data and asked if I could also use this Big Data set for my thesis with the subject ‘cultuurbezoek’. The end result was a thesis for my study Urban Geography and a factsheet about ‘cultuurbezoek’ for E-Quality in which I looked at the diversity in visiting different culture outings in The Netherlands.
Through the years I kept in on contact with a few of my colleagues. At the first workshop Google Analytics I gave in Utrecht as an entrepreneur two of my old colleagues participated. Later E-Quality became Atria. Another old colleague contacted me if I wanted to do a small project for Atria and built two websites for him. The small project was about desiging an online survey for the project about 'huiselijk geweld' (domestic voilence).
*I worked at STOGO Onderzoek + Advies from 2007 - 2009. STOGO Onderzoek + Advies was bought by I&O Research in 2010 (IPSOS I&O).
** I worked at E-Quality from 2005 - 2007. E-Quality merged and became Atria in 2012.