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3. EXPLANATORY NOTES
a. Core questionnaire (explanatory notes)
Basic explanatory notes for reference years 1988 to 2000 for the core questionnaire are
available in electronic form at
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/EU_labour_force_survey__methodology
For all years from 2001 onwards, more detailed information can be found there as well.
b. Derived variables
(explanatory notes)
for
standard
labour
market
analyses
This section provides further details on the derivation of the following variables: REM,
QUARTER, YEAR, HHPRIV, AGE, AGERESID, ILOSTAT, NA11S, ISCO1D, STARTIME,
NA112JS, LEAVTIME, NA11PRS, ISCOPR1D, DURUNE, HATLEV1D, and NA111YS.
Technical items relating to the interview
YEAR / QUARTER / REM:
The Labour Force Survey is distributed along the normally 52 weeks of the reference year,
and year of survey and reference week related to each interview are recorded in the core
variables REFYEAR and REFWEEK.
Weeks are coded using the norm ISO 8601 indicating that, according to the Gregorian
calendar, the first week of a year is the one that includes the first Thursday of that year
(which is equivalent to the week that includes the 4th January). A similar Thursday rule is
applied to months in order to derive the reference month (REM).
All reference weeks are basically assigned to survey quarters (QUARTER) according to this
rule as well. Quarter 1 normally covers the weeks 1 to 13, quarter 4 the weeks 40 to 52, but
there can be slight deviations from this general rule for certain years. For further details cp
Commission Regulation (EC) No 377/2008, Annex II.
Because of the organisation of the survey in several countries in the past (shifted survey
quarters starting up to one month earlier, i.e. using seasonal quarters instead of calendar
quarters), REFWEEK and REFYEAR define the actual reference week and the actual
calendar year the reference week belongs to, while variables YEAR and QUARTER are used
to define a fixed reference year and quarter based on the calendar quarter.
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