Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia

Social Statistics Methodology Section

Postal address: Lāčplēša Street 1, Riga, LV-1301, Latvia

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 all economic activities defined 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 the enterprise.

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

CVTS 6 covers enterprises with 10 or more persons employed belonging to sections B to N and R to S of NACE Rev. 2.

The total number of enterprises in the target population = 10069.

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

Latvia, the whole country.

Data are available for 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020.

Not applicable.

Euro, %, number of persons.

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:

Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers "Official Statistics Program for 2020-2022"

Not applicable.

Any CVTS data disseminated or sent to Eurostat has no variables which can be used to identify the responding enterprises. For each respondent, enterprise ID was anonymized to ensure confidentiality.

Primary confidentiality: In enterprise statistics cells are defined as confidential according to threshold rule and dominance rule (n,k). Cells are safe to be published if contributed by at least 4 respondents (n=4) as well as share of a single contributor is less than 80% (1,80) or two contributors share is less than 90% (2,90).

The secondary confidentiality criterion is regarded as fulfilled, if the values of confidentiality indicators are not possible to identify through arithmetical operations. In order to ensure it, sometimes additional indicator has to be marked as confidential. Usually a minimum value other than zero is chosen as the additional indicator.

Publicly available release calendar is available for data users.

Press release on 14.11.2022 (available only in Latvian)

https://stat.gov.lv/lv/statistikas-temas/izglitiba-kultura-zinatne/muzizglitiba/preses-relizes/14965-darba-deveja

https://stat.gov.lv/en/calendar

Not applicable.

Every 5 years.

Press release on 14.11.2022 (available only in Latvian)

https://stat.gov.lv/lv/statistikas-temas/izglitiba-kultura-zinatne/muzizglitiba/preses-relizes/14965-darba-deveja

No other national publications are planned for CVTS 6 as previously already mentioned.

CVTS national database tables published on 07.11.2022 in both languages, link to English version

https://stat.gov.lv/en/statistics-themes/education/lifelong-learning/other/14408-continuing-vocational-training?themeCode=II

Not applicable.

Not available at national level, can be required through Eurostat.

Not available.

Not applicable.

CVTS Metadata published on 07.11.2022 in both languages, link to English version

https://stat.gov.lv/en/metadata/14407-continuing-vocational-training 

Not applicable.

https://www.csp.gov.lv/en/quality-assurance-framework

For national metadata description of CVTS 2020 see 10.6. Documentation on methodology. 

CSB Quality policy and objectives.

Quality guidelines of the CSB is an informative document describing the CSB and the main aspects of its activity: stages, methods and organizational principles of producing the national statistics, policy of data protection and dissemination. The objective of these guidelines is to promote the implementation of the CSB’s operational strategy by involving in this process every employee of the CSB, developing the communication with society and extending the knowledge of every interested person – respondent, data user and all society – about the activity of CSB.

This is a quite difficult survey, questions were very comprehensive and complex.

For the enterprises were problematic questions: A12, C5. It's hard for enterprises to choose just 3 answers, they want to choose more.

Were difficult to answer to questions because the information was not always recorded in the enterprises’ accounting systems in a way that can be easily extracted or the information was not recorded by enterprises at all. 

Several of the enterprises, especially the bigger ones, pointed out that we should have informed them at least a year in advance. This would enable them to adjust their accounting systems and thereby better be able to give us requested information.

It becomes more usual that enterprises can not declare how much precisely was paid for CVT, because smaller enterprises often buy a set of services (bundled service) paying common monthly bill, of which one of components is ensuring also CVT for employees.

The main users of the CVTS are State and municipal authorities and agencies, international organisations, the media and students.

No user satisfaction surveys have been conducted. As European level user groups are the main user for this survey, it would be too early to analyse user satisfaction before any dissemination from Eurostat.

The final dataset covers all NACE sectors, enterprise size groups and variables as requested in the CVTS 6 legislation.

Not applicable.

Overall the accuracy of CVTS data is satisfactory. 

Software R and set of procedures from vardpoor package is used. The precision estimation is done by the ultimate cluster method (Hansen, Hurwitz and Madow, 1953) with Taylor linearization for linear statistics and residual estimation from the regression model to take weight calibration into account.

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

No additional information.

Frame population consists of units which are economic active in the reference period and belong to NACE groups defined in regulation. The sampling frame is made from statistical business register. Economically active enterprises with at least 10 persons employed are included in the sampling frame. 

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

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

Not applicable.

Data collector (helpdesk) training was conducted before start of the field-work to prevent measurement errors. Outliers were additionally checked.

The enterprises were constantly reminded to fill out the survey on the website. 

To increase the response rate, reminders were sent to non-respondents via e-mail, notification about unfilled questionnaire has been shown in the application of web-questionnaire and reminder phone calls were also made.

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

Item non­-response has been detected and corrected during the data collection period.

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

The data was collected via a web-based survey tool EDV. This tool contained most of the logical checks, data validation rules are described in the CSB data production system "Integrated Metadata Driven Statistical Data Management System (ISDAVS CASIS)". The respondents could see the errors they had made and correct the errors (respondent cannot transmit the data before those errors are corrected). Entry errors were also detected both by manual comparisons and during running logical controls at CSB of Latvia. Logical errors were eliminated by contacting the respondent. 

Not applicable.

T+18 months.

T+24 months.

T+24 months.

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

CVTS 2020 microdata was sent to Eurostat via eDAMIS on 21.06.2022.

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

Not applicable.

No deviations from the requirements.

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

Not applicable.

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

Large proportion of enterprises providing training (CVT courses and other forms of CVT) is mainly due to the fact that 96.8% enterprises report guided on-the-job training in 2020.

Data are available for 2005, 2010, 2015.

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

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

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

Burden on respondents: average time spent filling in the questionnaire 75 minutes (1 hour 15 minutes).

Cost for each survey separately was not estimated.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

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

Every 5 years.

The survey is mandatory. Legal basis: the Statistics Law and the Official Statistical program.

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

Validation of data, incl. checking of consistency in responses and treatment of this issue was made. The majority of validation rules were incorporated in the web-survey, but additional checks were applied to the received data in the CSB Integrated Metadata Driven Statistical Data Management System (ISDAVS).

The design weights, that are the inverses of the inclusion probabilities, were calculated according to the sample design, with all enterprises within the same stratum having equal design weights.

Outliers were calculated in groups of stratum, using distance method.

The design weights were adjusted using the data of response level in each stratum. Under-coverage errors were calculated, using information from actual target population. Over-coverage errors were estimated using sample information.

Horvitz-Tompson estimators are used, where final weights are design weights corrected as mentioned above.

No imputations, see also table 18.5.1 "Imputation - rate" in annex "LV - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The survey requires information at a very detailed level on the cost and hours spent on training, broken down into the number of training participants and the type of training. Many enterprises do not have personnel to do this kind of administration and collect this type of information, thus, it influences the quality of data. The burden of the CVTS should be reduced.