Seeking to determine which working patterns have a specific effect on part-time work, in 1998-99 France's INSEE statistical agency carried out a Timetable survey that questioned the homogeneity of this form of employment (again in terms of the working patterns upon which it is based). A neuronal method was used to classify an entire sample of part-time employees according to their weekly working patterns –the end result being that part-time work was shown to be a very heterogeneous form of employment. This was not only reflected by the existence of many different groups of part-time employees, each with highly differentiated individual and professional characteristics, but also (and above all) by the diversity of their weekly working patterns.