**3. Design of the Empirical Research**

#### *3.1. Sample*

The data used for the development of this research were obtained from the sixth European Working Conditions Survey, which was developed by the European Foundation for the Improvement of the Conditions of Life and Work in 2015 [61]. This survey analyzes the working conditions in the 27 countries of the European Union, providing valuable information on different aspects of the working conditions in Europe: Attitudes, perceptions and behavior of employees. The population consists of all persons aged 15 or above who are employed or self-employed and whose usual place of residence is in one of the member states of the European Union. The field work was carried out in 2015 based on 43,850 valid surveys.

To achieve the objectives of the present research, a sub-sample of 739 professional accountants were extracted using codes 2411 (accountants) and 3313 (accounting associate professionals) of the International Standard Classification of Occupations.

Of the respondents, 75.2% are women, while the remaining 24.8% are men. The average age of the professional accountants is 43.9 years. Most respondents working in the private sector (82.5%) with a contract mainly have indefinite work contracts (88.8%) that are an average of 10.9 years old. With respect to the main variable of this research, it should be noted that 17.7% of respondents believe that the development of the work directly affects their health, compared to 82.3% who considered otherwise.
