the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO)

infoservis@czso.cz

63 Society Development Statistics Department

Na Padesátém 81, Praha 10, Czechia

The EU survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals is an annual survey conducted since 2002. In Czechia, it has been conducted since 2002.

In 2022, the survey collects data on the access to information and communication technologies (ICT), on the use of the internet, e-government, e-commerce, internet of things, as well as green ICT.

National language: Výběrové šetření o používání informačních a komunikačních technologií v domácnostech a mezi jednotlivci

English: Sample survey on usage of information and communication technologies in households and among individuals

Questionnaire(s) in national language(s) and the translation in English are available in the annex.

The following common concepts and definitions apply under the Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS):

• the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011 published in the following breakdowns: low (ISCED levels 0-2: no formal education, primary education or lower secondary education), medium (ISCED levels 3-4: upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education) and high (ISCED levels 5-6: tertiary programmes which normally need a successful completion of ISCED 3 or 4, or second-stage tertiary education leading to an advanced research qualification);
• the International Standard Classification for Occupation ISCO-08 at the 2-digit level;
• the Classification of Economic Activities (NACE Rev.2-2008), at section level;
• the Common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 1) – finer granularity of NUTS 2 is provided on optional basis by some Member states;
• the SCL - Geographical code list;
• information about household income is provided at lower level of detail. 

Additional classifications used in the national questionnaire: No additional classifications used in the national questionnaire.

The ICT survey in households and by individuals covers those households having at least one member in the age group 16 to 74 years old. Internet access of households refers to the percentage of households that have an internet access, so that anyone in the household could use the internet.

Czech survey covers all households and people aged 16+.

The survey is collecting data of internet users, individuals who have used the internet in the three months prior to the survey. Regular internet users are individuals who used the internet, on average, at least once a week in the three months prior to the survey.

This annual survey is used to benchmark ICT-driven developments, both by following developments for core variables over time and by looking in greater depth at other aspects at a specific point in time. While the survey initially concentrated on access and connectivity issues, its scope has subsequently been extended to cover a variety of subjects (for example, the use of e-government and e-commerce) and socio-economic analysis (such as regional diversity, gender specificity, differences in age, education and the employment situation). The scope of the survey with respect to different technologies is also adapted so as to cover new product groups and means of delivering communication technologies to end-users.

For more details on the methodology applicable in each survey year, please consult the Methodological Manual for the respective year on CIRCABC - Methodological Manual - Information society statistics (europa.eu).

Deviations from standard ICT concepts: No deviations.

Households and Individuals

In the ICT usage survey, the target population for the different statistical units is:

- individuals: all individuals aged 16 to 74;

- households: all (private) households with at least one member aged 16 to 74. 

Target population composed of households and/or individuals:

• Number of households:  4.065 million
  
• Number of individuals:  7.767 million
  

Non-compulsory age groups also included in the target population:

All parts of country are included in the sample.

Year 2022

Not applicable

Percentages of ‘Households’ and Percentages of ‘Individuals’

Last three months before the interview for most of the questions.

Last twelve months before the interview for eGovernment module.

11.4.2022 - 15.7.2022

The legal basis for the 2022 EU survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals is the Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 October 2019 establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples (OJ  L 261 I, 14.10.2019, p. 1), as implemented by the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1223 of 27 July 2021 specifying the technical items of the data set, establishing the technical formats for transmission of information and specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the use of information and communication technologies domain for reference year 2022 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 2269, 27.07.2021, pp. 1-45).

Complementary national legislation constituting the legal basis for the survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals: No complementary national legislation

Data are collected and produced by the Czech Statistical Office. There are no other organisations or agencies involved.

Interviewers keep the list of addresses of the households which they should visit separately from the questionnaires. Questionnaires themselves are therefore anonymous from the beginning.

Anonymised data are available to people in central office (project manager of the survey and people from coordination of households surveys department).

Data are stored in oracle database, only people with authorised logins can access the data.

Release calendar is publicly available on this webpage: https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/catalogue-of-products

Publication with data from the survey on ICT usage in households is available here: https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/vyuzivani-informacnich-a-komunikacnich-technologii-v-domacnostech-a-mezi-osobami-2022

It was published on 22.11.2022.

On webpages of the Czech Statistical Office: https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/catalogue-of-products

Users can find information about data future availability in release calendar. There are press releases when publications are published. In case there is a press conference, users are informed about the conference by sending an invitation. The invitation is also available on webpages of the CZSO. Users can find the released data in public database, in online publications and on websites. Data are available for all users in the same time.  In case of publishing data from ICT survey, there are no deviations from general policies.

Annual

https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/chytrou-televizi-pouziva-44-domacnosti

https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/vyuzivani-informacnich-a-komunikacnich-technologii-v-domacnostech-a-mezi-osobami-2022

https://vdb.czso.cz/vdbvo2/faces/en/index.jsf?page=statistiky#katalog=31031

Not available

Only for researchers and for a fee.

Not relevant

Not available

https://www.czso.cz/documents/10180/164606768/06200422m.pdf/535c22b1-03da-4d6e-ae84-85785efc0762?version=1.1

This information is not available

https://www.czso.cz/documents/10180/23183847/politika_kvality_cz.pdf/9fc1fdda-0303-4049-b734-92837a215d7f?version=1.0

There was a course of quality management principles in the Czech Statistical Office in 2021 for managers.

The last time when internal audit on household surveys took place was in 2016.

Questions in national questionnaire correspond to the questions in model questionnaire, therefore Czech indicators are internationally comparable and serve to monitor the European Commission policies. Data are reliable for totals and for main breakdowns. Only breakdowns fulfilling given standard errors are published. Data for NUTS 3 are published calculated as three years averages. Data are published in T+9 months (release date of publication with data on 2022: 22.11.2022).

eGovernment Department on the Ministry of Inferior uses data from eGovernment module to monitor how much people use the internet to interact with public authorities. International comparison is used to monitor the position within EU27.

The Office of the Government of the Czech Republic use DESI index to compare digital development in Czechia with other countries.

User satisfaction is consulted during bilateral meetings. The meetings are held when the users propose to organize such meetings.

All of the variables required for transmission have been included in the microdata.

100% of the mandatory variables have been transmitted

Mistakes can happen during data collection when the interviewer records answers incorrectly or the respondent does not understand the question. Item non-response rate is very small for all variables, so this should not lead to big errors. Bigger problem is unit non-response because usually young people with high income tend to refuse to be surveyed. For younger people proxy answers are used very often. There is also an under-coverage error, but it is not very significant.

Errors are minimised by trainings for interviewers who are then able to explain meanings of the questions by other words or clarify ambiguities. The CZSO has also different modes of collection to be able to access data from as many people as possible.

The sampling error reflects the fact that only a particular sample was surveyed rather than the entire population. It is estimated by the standard error and can be expressed by the square root of the estimate of the sampling variance . The estimation of the sampling variance should ideally take into account the sampling design (e.g. the stratification).

Precision estimates for the question "Individuals having ordered goods or services for private use over the internet in the last 12 months" (individuals who ticked 'Within the last 3 months' or 'Between 3 months and a year ago' in question D1 of the 2022 model questionnaire):

Number of respondents (absolute value for ‘Yes’ answers):   3 942

Estimated proportion (in %):  77

Standard error (in percentage points):   0.56 

Details of the breakdowns are available in the Annex below. 

See more details on non-sampling error below.

Some over-coverage exists in the CEUs register in terms of recorded residential status (usually about 10% of the samples are coded as “administrative waste” – non-residential (recreational or commercial space, temporarily empty flats – no persons with usual residence, demolished buildings not yet deleted from the register).

10 %

Not requested in the ICT survey.

1)       Measurement errors:  

Mistakes can happen during data collection when the interviewer records answers incorrectly or the respondent does not understand the question. Errors are minimised by trainings for interviewers

2)       Questionnaire design and testing:  

Questionnaire was translated and the questions formulated by project manager of the survey. New questions were sent to cognitive testing which was conducted by cognitive laboratory. This laboratory consist of several interviewers from different regions who are employees of the CZSO. Their job is to test questionnaires both cognitively and technically (testing of the programme used for recording answers during the fieldwork). After the formulations of the questions were approved, questions were inserted in the software used by the interviewers and tested again (this time technically) by people in cognitive laboratory.

3)       Interviewer training:  

All interviewers get methodological manual where each question is described in detail. This manual also describes how the interviewers should proceed during the visits, which kind of propagation they should use and how to communicate with the household. Interviewers are also obliged to take part in training specialised for interviewers. Since the Covid pandemics the methodological training is conducted via video presentation, trainings on how to use the software is conducted either personally or via video conference. Regional managers provide the interviewers with the region specific information.

4)       Proxy interview rates:  34 %

Information about non-respondents: Non-respondents are more often young people, people with high-income or people from big cities.

The unit response rate is the ratio of the number of in-scope respondents (= the number of achieved interviews or the net sample size to the number of eligible elements selected from the sampling frame).

Unit non-response rate for

• Households:   41 %
• Individuals (aged 16-74):   not possible to calculate

Comments: Sample is based on selection of flats, not people. Therefore the CZSO is not able to provide information on gross sample of individuals. All persons older than 16 years living in selected flats were surveyed.

1)       Methods used for dealing with unit non-response:  

Advanced notification in the form of phone call is used. Up to six visits in case of non-contacts. Leaflets with results of previous years are given to respondents to demonstrate how the data provided are used

2)       Methods used for minimizing unit non-response:  Correction factor in the weighting procedure

3)       Substitution permitted:  YES

4)       Substitution rate (in %):  34 % proxy.

Depends on the respondents – if they do not want to respond themselves or are not at home in the moment of the interviewing, other members of the household can reply on their behalf. During data processing these responses are handled in the same way as non-proxy responses.

Items with low response rates (observed rates in %):  All items have response rate which is high enough (higher then 0,9).

There are no such issues detected.

Not requested for ICT Survey

Final data are published in the end of November. The fieldwork was conducted in April-July period of the same year.

All data were delivered in time. First data were delivered on 6.9.2022 and the final data were delivered on 19.9.2022.

100 % of data were delivered in time.

Since the sample is withdrawn from the register of buildings, there are no problems with comparability between regions.

Not relevant

Possible limitations in the use of data for comparisons over time:  Data are comparable over time unless stated otherwise. Data that are not comparable are flagged.

The length of comparable time series depends on the module and variable considered within each of the modules of the survey.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

All statistics are coherent within the dataset

MANDATORY questions in the Eurostat model questionnaire 2022:

The table in the annex lists the questions that do not reflect the coverage of subjects and characteristics of Annex 2 of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1898 of the 20 July 2021. 

Adoption of OPTIONAL questions and items in the Eurostat model questionnaire 2022:

The table in the annex lists the optional questions from the annual Eurostat model questionnaire 2022 included in the national questionnaire and their coverage for age groups beyond the standard scope. 

Additional questions introduced in the national questionnaire: 

• Do you (or anybody else in your household) use a computer at home? If yes, is it desktop, laptop or tablet?
• Is a fixed internet connection in your household distributed (e.g. by Wi-Fi router or a modem) in the way that you can use it on more devices?
• Do you use a mobile phone? If yes, is it a smartphone or a button phone?
• Do you use the internet on a mobile phone?
• When accessing the internet on a mobile phone in the last 3 months did you connect via Wi-Fi, mobile data or both?
• Have you been searching online information about travelling in the last 3 months?

Effects of deviations from the routing used in the Eurostat model questionnaire:  None

No preliminary data are published, therefore no revisions

In web publication there is a date of actualization for each chapter, hence the data users can see when (and if) the chapter was revised.

Not relevant

The source of the raw data is described with more details in the paragraphs below.

Census Enumeration Districts (CEUs) constitute the first-stage sampling units. CEUs are small geographical areas covering the whole territory of the country. They are used as enumeration districts during the census, but their use is more general. Continuously updated geographical register is maintained by the CSU, where these units form the basic geographical layer, on which subsequent aggregations are based. This register is the base for an integrated hierarchical geographical information system and is the base for databases of regional indicators and statistical data. For each CEU, a list of all buildings is maintained in the register. This list is updated from administrative data of the construction authorities (new buildings’, flats’ or commercial premises’ acceptation protocols, demolitions’ protocols). For each building, the number of dwelling units is recorded.

The sample is not drawn from another survey sample, master sample or micro-census.

ICT survey is embedded in Labour Force survey LFS survey is conducted in 5 waves (quarters) – the first wave includes national part of LFS and European ad hoc module; the second, the third and the fourth wave include only national part of LFS; the fifth wave includes national part of LFS and ICT survey.

ICT survey is voluntary.

Some over-coverage exists in the CEUs register in terms of recorded residential status (usually about 10% of the samples are coded as “administrative waste” – non residential (recreational or commercial space, temporarily empty flats – no persons with usual residence, demolished buildings not yet deleted from the register). Small CEUs (in terms of number of residential dwellings) are currently dropped from the sampling frame due to practical sampling reasons (approximately 1.26% of the dwellings).

Dwellings (sampling units) are selected using stratified two-stage sampling design. CEUs - census enumeration units are first sampled as primary sampling units with probability proportional to their size. The first stage sample is stratified by region (LAU1) and size of municipality to which the CEU belongs. In the second stage, 6 dwellings are sampled in each sampled CEU (simple random sampling without replacement). All individuals aged 16+ in households living in selected dwellings are interviewed.

Annual

1) Methods used to gather data:

Face to face interviews, Telephone interviews, Self-administrated

2) Short description of the survey method:

Respondents can choose which method they want to be interviewed by. The interviewers can make a phone call, they can go to the household personally or they can hand out/send the questionnaire to the respondent to fill by himself/herself.

In 2022 the proportion among the methods was as the following: Face to face interviews (63 %), Telephone interviews (28 %), Self-administrated (PDF or paper) (9 %)

3) Variables completed from an external source:

All variables are collected within LFS and ICT questionnaire.

Response rate is calculated for each region separately.

Region (and also gender, age and economic status) enter into the calculation of weights which helps to provide data representative for each region.

Final results are compared to the previous year, validation programs are used to check microdata according to Eurostat standards as well as year to year changes.

First stage of editing data is on the base of comments from the interviewers (e.g. some items purchased on the internet are difficult to categorize, so the interviewers insert comments about such items).

Second stage of editing data is about imputation of item non-response, i.e. imputation of missing data. Thanks to the good job of the interviewers, the imputation rate is very small for all the variables. The highest is for the variable Households income.

After imputations the post-stratification weights are computed.

For the target indicator "Individuals having ordered goods or services for private use over the internet in the last 12 months" (individuals who ticked 'Within the last 3 months' or 'Between 3 months and a year ago' in question D1 of the 2022 model questionnaire):

Imputation rate (% of observations): 0

Imputation rate (share of estimate): 0

Methods used to impute item non-response: Hot-deck

Grossing up procedures have been applied to: Households and Individuals

 Description of the weighting procedures:

The achieved sample was re-weighted using the integrated calibration technique (producing the same weights on household and personal level). This technique ensures that the weighted sample structure corresponds to a set of known external population characteristics. The calculations were implemented using the CALMAR software in SAS.

The following calibration variables were used:

• population characteristics in each NUTS 3 region:

• population totals from demographic statistics

• economic activity characteristics in each NUTS3 region:

• number of economic inactive persons (estimate based on the Labour Force Survey)
• number of unemployed (estimate based on the Labour Force Survey)
• number of employed (estimate based on the Labour Force Survey)

• population characteristics at the national level (based on the demographic statistics and demographic projection):

• age groups (0-15, 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75+)
• gender
• number of inhabited dwellings at the national level based on the 2001 Census continuously updated from administrative sources of construction authorities

Since the target population of the survey were persons living in private households, the demographic statistics aggregate data were adjusted by subtracting institutionalised population (from social security administrative data) and persons in prisons

Not relevant

Not relevant