Survey characteristics
Purpose
To provide information on the relationship between a person and the labour market. Characteristics of persons are connected to their current or future position on the labour market.
Target population
Persons of 15 years and older in the Netherlands, excluding persons in homes and institutions.
Statistical unit
Persons and households.
First year of survey
1987
Frequency
A limited set of variables concerning the labour market is published every quarter. This limited set and a large additional set of variables concerning the labour market are also published on a yearly basis. In addition, three-month averages on the employed and unemployed labour force are available.
Publication strategy
The three-month averages are published monthly as provisional figures; the definite figures are published at the end of the statistical year. The quarterly and yearly figures are always definite.
How is the survey carried out?
Survey type
Sample survey.
Survey method
The Dutch LFS is a so-called rotating panel survey. Respondents are visited at home by a Statistics Netherlands interviewer (Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing, CAPI). After that they are contacted four more times by phone (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing, CATI).
The first interview takes approximately half an hour per household. The subsequent interviews take only a few minutes. This rotating panel design was introduced in the fourth quarter of 1999.
Respondents
Per household a maximum of eight persons aged 15 years or older are interviewed.
Sample size
In 2007, 67 thousand addresses were selected.
Checking and correction methods
The information reported by respondents is checked for internal inconsistencies. Over- and under-representation of certain groups in the response are corrected for with the aid of weighting.
Weighting
The observations are weighted in two steps. In the first step inclusion weights are assigned to the observations, calculated in such a way that they can correct for uneven inclusion probabilities that follow from the applied sampling method. In the second step final weights are determined; this step reduces the bias caused by non-response, using information on sex, age, country of origin, official place of residence and some other regional classifications. In addition, information from registrations on country of origin, registration at employment office and income is used. The rotating panel design is also explicitly used and all waves are weighted together in one step.
How accurate are the results?
Accuracy
The outcomes of the Dutch LFS are subject to a margin of error. Because of the complex sampling design, it is difficult to estimate the 95% margins of confidence. Because of the considerable relative inaccuracy, figures under a certain threshold are not published. In the tables these figures are replaced by a dot (.). In principle the minimum for quarterly figures is set at 30 thousand rounded in the total column. Subdivisions of groups of 30 thousand persons and over are published. For the yearly figures, a minimum of 15 thousand is set for the total. Subdivisions of groups of 15 thousand persons or more are published.
Sequential comparability
Most tables in StatLine contain figures from 1996 onwards. In some cases it is only possible to make comparable figures from 2000 onwards. For a limited number of data on the labour market, sequential comparable series are available from 1988.
For all tables based on the Dutch LFS there is a break in the time series from 2000 to 2001. From 2001 onwards, the Dutch LFS figures are based on all five interviews per household. Before 2001, the Dutch LFS consisted of only one CAPI interview.
Quality strategy
The response is entered into a computer during the interview, and as a result inconsistent answers are immediately spotted. In the case of proxy interviews (when a member of the household answers the questions for another member of the household), the interviewer checks whether this person has enough information to answer the questions.
