Statbel

Economic Statistics

Statbel

North Gate

Boulevard du Roi Albert II, 16

1000 Bruxelles

The Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS) collects information on enterprises’ investment in the continuing vocational training of their staff. Continuing vocational training (CVT) refers to education or training measures or activities which are financed in total or at least partly by the enterprise (directly or indirectly). Part financing could include the use of work-time for the training activity as well as financing of training equipment.

Information available from the CVTS is grouped around the following topics:

- Provision of CVT courses and other forms of CVT (training/non-training enterprises)

- CVT strategies

- Participants in CVT courses

- Costs of CVT courses

- Time spent in CVT courses

- Characteristics of CVT courses

- Assessment of CVT activities

The CVTS also collects some information on initial vocational training (IVT).

For further information see the CVTS 6 legislation (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/education-and-training/legislation) and the CVTS 6 implementation manual (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/education-and-training/methodology).

The main groupings for enterprises are by economic activity (NACE), size group and training/non-training enterprises.

Enterprises with at least 10 persons employed from NACE-sectors B-N & R-S.

Definitions as well as the list of variables covered are available in the CVTS 6 implementation manual (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/education-and-training/methodology).

Enterprises with at least 10 persons employed.

Enterprise definition is compliant with Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93.

Target population: 33 084 enterprises.

Variable A2tot (persons employed) refers to the annual average 2020.

Belgium.

CVTS 3/4/5/6 with reference years 2005/2010/2015/2020.

Not applicable.

Number, EUR.

The reference year for CVTS 6 is the calendar year 2020.

At European level:

Basic legal act: Regulation (EC) No 1552/2005 of the European Parliament and the Council

Implementing act: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1153/2014, amending Commission Regulation (EC) No 198/2006

At national level:

There is no national legal act. The survey is voluntary for enterprises. 

Not applicable.

The Belgian confidentiality rules are followed.

Data treatment is subject to security rules in order to only allow authorised access of the data.

A national release calendar presenting all the publications of Statbel is available on the Statbel website (www.statbel.fgov.be). 

The release calendar is available on the Statbel website (www.statbel.fgov.be).

The Statbel website presents the main CVTS-indicators (https://statbel.fgov.be/fr/themes/emploi-formation/formation-et-enseignement/formation-continue).

Researchers can obtain the micro data after following a procedure.

The CVTS is organised every 5 years. 

The Belgian press release, presenting the main indicators, was released in November 2022.

Aggregated data presenting the main indicators are available on the Statbel website (https://statbel.fgov.be/fr/themes/emploi-formation/formation-et-enseignement/formation-continue).

Tailor-made tables can be obtained by request.

CVTS is not included in the online database. 

Not applicable.

The conditions to obtain microdata are available on the Statbel website: www.statbel.fgov.be/en/about-statbel/what-we-do/microdata-research.

Not available.

Metadata of the CVTS are available on the Statbel website (https://statbel.fgov.be/fr/themes/emploi-formation/formation-et-enseignement/formation-continue). 

Some basic methodological explanations are available on the Statbel website.

Other additional methodological information is available on demand or in the quality report.

100%. 

Quality indicators are available at the national level.

Quality indicators are available at national level to guarantee the overall quality.

Weaknesses:

• Large quantity of questions - the survey is long (in general an enterprise needs +- 1 hour to answer the survey).
• The survey regroups multiple choice questions, polar questions, open questions and semi-open questions. This complicates the survey.
• For the most part the survey can be completed by the person who is responsible for training and staff, but some questions require help from other services/departments (time consuming).
• Survey is organised on a voluntary basis.

Strong points:

• It gives us a good picture about professional training activities in the enterprises.
• A survey for enterprises with at least 10 persons employed in the private sector and not for micro-enterprises.

Besides Eurostat, the Belgian CVTS data are also frequently used by national policy makers, by social actors like employers’ associations and trade unions and by researchers.

Users' needs are explored and taken into account when designing the national questionnaire.

100%, as Statbel covers all the NACE-sections stipulated by the CVTS-Regulation.

100%.

Overestimation of participation rates is possible because of self-selection effects (non-training enterprises may not respond to the questionnaire).

Stratified simple random sampling, strata defined by SP_NACE, SP_SIZE and region.

Grossing-up procedure is executed in two steps:

• non-response correction by post-stratification on sampling strata;
• calibration on two variables, namely the number of enterprises and the number of persons employed according to the administrative register. 

See table 13.2.1 "Sampling errors - indicators" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

See the following items for more information on the non-sampling errors. 

For sampling, the statistical business register is used.

The primary data source for the Belgian CVTS is the National Social Security Database (containing all enterprises with persons employed).

The statistical business register is updated each quarter. To avoid over-coverage, Statbel has used the version of February 2021 to draw the sample. This version gave an exhaustive overview of all enterprises employing at least 10 persons in the calendar year 2020. 

See table 13.3.1 "Coverage error" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

There is no over-coverage.

See table 13.3.1.1 "Over-coverage - rate" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

There are no measurement errors to report. 

Unit non-response is probably due to the nature of the survey. We guess that a lot of non-training enterprises do not answer the questionnaire (self-selection bias).

The most challenging questions to be answered, are the quantitative variables about costs and hours of training.

To reduce unit non-response, Statbel took several actions: first a reminder was sent to all non-responding enterprises, secondly there were telephone contacts and finally some (larger) enterprises were visited by a representative of Statbel. 

Unit non-response = 53.6%.

Grossing-up procedure is executed in two steps:

• non-response correction by post-stratification on sampling strata;
• calibration on two variables, namely number of enterprises and number of persons employed according to the administrative register).

See table 13.3.3.1 "Unit non-response - rate" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

See table 13.3.3.2 "Item non-response - rate" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Data collection is done via Blaise software (CAWI).

Data editing and cleaning are done in SAS, as well as lots of quality checks (especially the consistency between reported costs, training hours and number of persons employed).

Corrections in the data file are done when the enterprise reports more or less persons employed compared to the number of persons employed available in the registers (i.e. mergers, splits, etc...).

Not applicable.

Data is available 18 months after the reference period.

Time lag first results is 18 months.

Time lag final results is 20 months or more.

See table 14.2 "Project phases - dates" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Countries should transmit data to Eurostat no later than 18 months after the end of the reference year.

Not applicable.

Fully comparable. There are no deviations from CVTS 6 concepts and definitions or deviations from the CVTS 6 questionnaire.

No additional variables related to COVID-19 were collected.

See table 15.1 "Comparability - geographical" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

CVTS 6 is comparable with previous waves, namely with CVTS 3, CVTS 4, CVTS 5.

See table 15.2 "Comparability - over time" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

CVTS 6 is comparable with previous waves, namely with CVTS 3, CVTS 4, CVTS 5.

See table 15.3 "Coherence - cross-domain" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

CVTS results can be used together with AES and LFS results, but they are not fully comparable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

CVTS results for a given reference year are based on the same microdata and results are calculated using the same estimation methods, therefore the data are internally coherent.

Cost information is not available yet.

Burden on respondents is high (especially for the quantitative variables).

There is no revision of the CVTS data.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

CVTS 6 is mainly based on survey data, but for some variables (A1, A2tot, A2m, A2f, A4 and A5) the statistical business register has been used. 

See table 18.1 "Source data and data collection" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Every 5 years.

CAWI is used as tool for the data collection. CAWI stands for computer assisted web-interview. 

See also table 18.1 "Source data and data collection" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

The web survey carries out some first checks as soon as the respondents enter their data. These checks do not ‘block’ and discourage respondents from continuing to fill out the survey, but they allow them to verify the information they have entered and correct it where necessary. After all, respondents fill out the survey on a voluntary basis.

Post-coding was done by a coding team at the central and regional offices (for which a special training was organised before starting the coding activities).
Post-coding of the paper questionnaires was done straightforward, via the coding programme.
Post-coding of the open questions from the web survey was done by the coding team in separate Excel-sheets that were afterwards imported into the SAS files.

Not applicable.

The highest imputation rate is observed for the variable C1tot: 0.32%.

See table 18.5.1 "Imputation - rate" in annex "BE - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

Not applicable.