National Statistical Institute - Bulgaria

Department "Education and Culture Statistics"

Sofia, Panayot Volov str. No 2

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.

CVTS 6 covers enterprises in economic activities in sections B to N and R to S of NACE Rev. 2.

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).

The statistical unit for CVTS 6 is enterprise.

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

Enterprises with 10 or more persons employed as of 31.12.2020 belonging to certain NACE categories (see 3.3).

Total number of enterprises in the sampling frame is around 30 000.

Variable A2tot (persons employed) refers to 31 December 2020.

Whole country (full territorial coverage).

1999, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020.

Not applicable.

Number, EUR, hours.

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:

Statistics Act (Law on Statistics) - Promulgated, SG No. 57/25.06.1999, last amended, SG No. 7/19.01.2018.

Not applicable.

Stipulated in the Statistical Act (Law on Statistics) Articles 25, 26 and 27; and Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 (amended by Regulation (EU) 2015/759).

In accordance to the Law on Statistics (Articles 25, 26 and 27) and Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 (amended by Regulation (EU) 2015/759).

In accordance to the dates defined in the Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute.

The calendar is available on the NSI website: https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/480

In accordance to the Rules for Dissemination of Statistical Products and Services (https://nsi.bg/en/content/564/basic-page/rules-dissemination-statistical-products-and-services).

Every 5 years.

Main results were published at the NSI’s website: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/4923

Not available.

Information System INFOSTAT of the National Statistical Institute: https://infostat.nsi.bg/infostat/pages/module.jsf?x_2=167

Not applicable.

In accordance to the interior (for the NSI) Rules for Provision of Anonymised Individual Data for Scientific and Research Purposes (http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/12152/).

Not available.

Not applicable.

Metadata and methodology notes were published at the NSI’s website: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/4924/

Not applicable.

The national quality report was published at the NSI’s website: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/15095

A set of quality criteria have been set up within the Commission Regulation No 1153/2014.

All criteria within Commission Regulation No 1153/2014 were applied.

Overall assessment

Strengths:

• International comparable data about continuing vocational training in Bulgaria.
• Filters and checks implemented in the data entry programme seem to have worked well.

Weaknesses:

• Conducting the survey in the year when global epidemic and Global pandemic and national measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 greatly impact the normal activity of enterprises. A lot of all enterprises were temporally closed down, had to reduce their employees or to reduce the volume of their production.   
• Un-updated sampling frame caused an over-coverage.
• The survey was expensive.
• The questionnaire was quite long.

Problems encountered and lessons to be learnt:

As previous waves some enterprises could not provide any information on variables related to the CVT costs, because they do not keep specific account.

Some enterprises reacted quite negatively to respond on employees training for year when they reduced their employees and had financial losses due to the pandemic.  

Main users of statistical data are Policy makers at European and national level, researchers, students and international organizations (CEDEFOP and OECD).

Not surveyed yet.

The national dataset covers all NACE sectors, enterprise size groups and variables as requested in the CVTS 5/CVTS 6 legislation (Commission Regulation No 1153/2014).

Not applicable.

The overall accuracy is considered as very good, significant variations had not been observed, see also table 13.2.1 "Sampling errors - indicators" in annex "BG - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Sampling method:

Business register as of 31.12.2019 was used as a sampling frame.

The sample was stratified by NACE Rev.2 and 3 size categories: 20 NACE Rev.2 categories [B, C10-C12 ,C13-C15 ,C17-C18 ,C19-C23 ,C24-C25, C26-C28 and C33, C29-C30, C16+C31-32, D-E, F, G(45), G(46), G(47), I, H, J, K(64,65), K(66), L+M+N+R+S].

The sample size was calculated to ensure a maximum half-length of 0.2 of the 95% confidence interval for the estimated parameters, which were a proportion of “training enterprises” (based on CVTS 5 results) for each of 60 sample stratum using simple random sampling in accordance to the Commission Regulation No 1153/2014. Non-response was predicted also using data from the previous wave for each stratum.

Estimation/grossing-up procedures:

The current business register data as of 31 December 2020 for the total population was used for weighting and adjustment of the results.

The data obtained by the survey was post-stratified by: 20 NACE categories used for sampling and 7 size groups (based on the number of employed).

The total number of post-strata was 140. All units (enterprises) in each post-stratum had the same weight, calculated by dividing the population in each post-stratum by the number of the interviewed enterprises in the same post-stratum with respect of the number of the employed.

Calculation of the coefficients of variation:

Tyler lineralization method is used for all calculations of the standard errors and coefficients of variation. The calculations were performed by SPSS (PASW) software, Complex Sample Analysis Module.

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

See tables below.

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

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

Not applicable.

Serious issues with the measurement errors were not found.

Overall unit non-response: 13.4%.

Measures to reduce non-response:

- Availability of online system for self-administered interview;

- Phone and email assistance to the enterprises by CVTS experts form regional offices and Head office;

- Letter to the enterprises signed by the President of NSI;

- Annotation for the start of the survey on NSIs website;

- System of reminders (via email);

- Advanced contact with non-responded enterprises via phone;

- Paper version of the questionnaire;

- Non-response survey.

Methods used for adjustments for statistical unit non-response: Adjustment via weights - post-stratification method.

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

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

No major processing errors discovered. However several enterprises had similar mistakes on the following variables:

- Some enterprises had difficulties to calculate paid working time spent in courses (variable C3).

- Some enterprises had difficulties to distribute the share of training hours spent in obligatory courses for health and safety at work (variable C4).

- Considerable number of enterprises had difficulties to distribute the CVT cost and to report the actual value of costs. 

Not applicable. The sampling design effect was included into the calculated sampling errors (coefficients of variation).

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

The preliminary national results were disseminated at the NSI’s website at 30.09.2022.

The final national results will be disseminated in 2023.

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

The national dataset was transmitted with two months delay due to the engagement of the ETS team in Population Census and needs for additional checks to confirm or correct required warnings in the data checking tool. 

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

Not applicable.

All Concepts and definitions used for CVTS 6 are inline in the EU legislation and the implementation manual

Some additional variables related to COVID-19 were collected, see table 15.1 "Comparability - geographical" in annex "BG - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

No major changes in CVTS 6 implementation that have an impact on the comparability with previous wave.

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

Not applicable.

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

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.

Staff involved in administering the survey:

2.5 experts from Department ‘Education and Culture statistics’ – responsible for survey organization, implementation of methodology, preparation of the national questionnaire, sampling, data processing, preparation of EU dataset and quality report, data dissemination;

1 expert from Department ‘Information and Application Software’ – responsible for preparation of the informatics tool.  

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

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

Every 5 years.

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

Overall monitoring of the online data entry. Phone and email assistance to the enterprises by CVTS experts form regional offices and Head office.

The initial data checking was carried out at the Regional Statistical Offices (RSO). The data tools framework (application for data entry) was designed with additional controls and filters. There were added also extra checking rules by comparing the entered information between different related questions in order to confront possible inconsistent answers.

After finishing the work at regional level, the data was checked and validated again in the Head Office. Additional verifications were made at the record level.

Finally the data validation tool developed by Eurostat had been used for the data set checks. When needed enterprises were re-contacted for confirmation of some warnings.

Data from SBS and LCS was used for additional quality checks.

Not applicable.

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

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Main results for Bulgaria: http://www.nsi.bg/en/node/4923 and https://infostat.nsi.bg/infostat/pages/module.jsf?x_2=167