Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (STATEC)

Sub-contractor: TNS Ilres Luxembourg

STATEC

Social Statistics Division (SOC) / Unit "Living Conditions" (SOC1)

STATEC

B.P. 304, L-2013 LUXEMBOURG

ILRES

41, rue du Puits Romain, L-8070 BERTRANGE

The EU survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals is an annual survey conducted since 2002. In Luxembourg, the survey has been conducted on a yearly basis since 2002 by Luxembourg's National Statistical Authority (STATEC).

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(s):

• Ëmfro iwwer Benotze vun den Informatiouns- an Kommunikatiounstechnologien (TIC)
• Enquête communautaire sur l’utilisation des TIC par les ménages et les particuliers

English:

• Community Survey on the usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) among households and individuals 

Questionnaires in national languages 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: None

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.

None

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: None

Households and Individuals

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

- individuals: all individuals aged 16 to 74 (living in a private household);

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

Target population composed of households and/or individuals:

• Number of households: 253 905
• Number of individuals: 493 469

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

The whole country is covered.

Year 2022

Not applicable

Percentages of ‘Households’ and Percentages of ‘Individuals’

The reference period for most of the survey questions is the last three months before the interview (or last 12 months if specified in the model questionnaire)

01/06/2022 - 31/07/2022

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: STATEC's organic law on 10 July 2011 which defines STATEC's main missions

None

A flyer is sent to the sampled individuals to remind them their rights in terms of personal data protection. 

STATEC strictly follows the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

"STATEC", acronym for National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, was founded in 1962 as a result of the merger between the General Office of Statistics and the Economic Studies and Documentation Service. It was reformed by the Law of 10th July 2011.

This law specifies the missions of STATEC and its internal organisation, and it defines its framework and the careers of the employees and civils servants. Articles 13 and 17 state two special clauses, which are the legal obligation of responding and the statistical confidentiality:

Statistical obligation

Public administrations, individuals and legal entities are required to provide the requested statistical information. This obligation is backed by the right of investigation of STATEC’s agents. Refusal to provide the information within the deadline or the provision of false information is punishable by fine.

Statistical confidentiality

The information collected by STATEC can only be used for statistical purposes. Any administrative or fiscal use is forbidden. The specific information of surveyed individuals and legal entities may in no case be disclosed. STATEC’s officials and representatives are held personally liable for the strict observance of the statistical confidentiality, subject to disciplinary and penal sanctions.

Once the microdata have been transmitted and validated by Eurostat, ICT-based aggregates are published on STATEC's web portal and made publicly available to data users

None

Aggregates are published on STATEC's web portal and publicly available

Microdata are accessible upon request by STATEC's Data Protection Officer and only for research purposes

Annual

None

Short publications presenting the main results of the survey: descriptive statistics ("Regards"), infographics etc.

Link on STATEC online site with ICT survey main statistical figures   

Link to data tables

Microdata accessible upon request to STATEC's data protection officer; only for research purposes

Ad hoc extractions of statistical aggregated are possible upon request as long as data confidentiality is guaranteed

On request only for research purposes

Description of the survey methodology on STATEC's web portal

Information not available

Information not available

Not applicable

The first questionnaires were checked to verify the filters and the quality.

Every day, telephone field coordinators listen to current interviews to verify quality of interviewers' work. They were also able to act at any time to help them solve problems if needed.

Interviewers were assessed on:

• quality of their presentation
• quality of persuasion
• quality of listening (clearness, rapidness, respect of instructions)
• neutral positioning
• management of the interview

Survey microdata are fully checked and validated for statistical consistency.

ICT microdata are used by Ministry of Digitalization and by researchers and policy makers in general.

In particular, ICT data are used in order to assess the digital gap in the population, particularly between the age groups.

Information not available

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

Not applicable

The ICT survey in Luxembourg suffers from both sampling and non-sampling errors. Sampling errors are caused by the survey interviewing only a fraction (less than 2300 individuals aged between 16 and 74) of the target population, while non-sampling errors are caused by other factors such as the undercoverage of certain segments of the population, unit and item non-response or measurement errors to some questions. It is worth noting the ICT questionnaire may happen to be complex and cumbersome to certain groups of people who are not very accustomed of using digital technologies.

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).

More information on methodology for calculating precision estimates is detailed in the paragraphs below.

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): 1848

Estimated proportion (in %): 80.8%

Standard error (in percentage points): 0.92

Details of the breakdowns are available in the annex below. 

See more details on non-sampling error below.

Coverage errors may occur in the ICT survey, although they should be extremely limited.

Luxembourg's Population Register covers both people living in private households and in institutions.

It is possible that individuals in the latter category are included in the selected sample, although a priori data cleaning is done to get rid of people living in collective households as well as data control and validation a posteriori should allow identifying non-eligible units. Notwithstanding all this, the share of such units should be very marginal.

Not requested in the ICT survey.

1)       Measurement errors: 

Measurement errors are likely to occur due to the inherent complexity of the survey and the questionnaire. In order to keep measurement errors as small as possible, actions have been taken:

2)       Questionnaire design and testing: 

The questionnaire has filtering and routing, so the respondents answer the questions which correspond to their own situation

3)       Interviewer training: 

Telephone interviewers were briefed: all the questions were read and explained and the interviewers tested the questionnaire before beginning the interviews. They could also ask precisions for anything that was not clear enough. Specific instructions were written down and distributed.

4)       Proxy interview rates: not available

Information about non-respondents: Not available

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: 
• Individuals (aged 16-74): 37.6%

Comments: As the ICT survey in Luxembourg is an individual survey, no detailed information on non-response is available at household level, except the gross initial and the final achieved sample sizes.

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

Calibration for weighting by population benchmarks

2) Methods used for minimizing unit non-response:

• sending an explanatory letter
• possibility of answering online or by phone
• 2 months to answer
• 2 reminders sent
• friendliness and seriousness of the telephone agents
• possibility to take an appointment  in order to answer the questionnaire at a more convenient time
• each telephone number gets called up to 30 times, in order to get in contact with the person to be interviewed

3) Substitution permitted:

Interviewers may be allowed for proxy interviews (i.e. another person in the household than the one who was randomly selected can answer the questions):

• Interviews by telephone: interviewers were instructed to talk to the person who received the letter.
• Online interviews: theoretically possible, but not traceable

4) Substitution rate (in %): impossible to estimate

Items with low response rates (observed rates in %):

Limitations in activities because of health problems (8.4%)

Extremely limited.

May stem from the recoding of certain questions.

Not requested for ICT Survey

Data were available end of October of the statistical year, which means approximatively 5 months after the data collection period.

The deadlines for data transmission as set out in EU regulations were met.

The deadlines for data transmission as set out in EU regulations were met.

Comparable data in time and regions with earlier surveys

Not relevant

Possible limitations in the use of data for comparisons over time: 

Comparisons might be limited due to the small size of the sample.

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

No coherence problems observed

MANDATORY questions in the Eurostat model questionnaire 2022:

The table in the annex below 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 below 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: 

• FD1: On a scale of 0 to 10, how competent are you in using the Internet?
• FD2: Have you ever received help using the Internet?
• FD3: For which of the following activities did you receive help?
• FD4: On a scale of 0 to 10, does using the Internet make your life easier or more complicated?
• FD5: What are the benefit(s) you gained from using the Internet?
• FD6: On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you rate your level of stress caused by using the Internet?
• FD7: For which Internet use(s) do you experience stress?
• RP2021_1: Did you, or someone else in your household, participate online, on myguichet.lu, in the population census organized by STATEC in November 2021?
• RP2021_2: What was the main difficulty encountered?
• RP2021_3: What was the reason for this?
• C9_2022: Would you mind if some administrative services were only available online?

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

On a case-by-case basis according to the type of data

There is no practice in term of data revision for the ICT datafiles.

However if significant errors happened to be detected, then data revision might be considered.

Not relevant

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

The sample was taken from the Luxembourg's National Population Register (Registre National des Personnes Physiques - RNPP). This register covers all the resident population in Luxembourg, no matter its age, sex, citizenship or residence status.

It is a stand-alone survey.

Participation is mandatory and unpaid.

The sampling design is a probability design: a sample of 6 000 individuals aged between 16 and 74 is selected by simple random sampling from Luxembourg's National Population Register.

No stratification.

Number of individuals interviewed in the household: 1 or more.

Annual

1) Methods used to gather data:

CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) and CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing).

Based on a random sample drawn from an official registry, every selected person was looked up in order to see if a telephone number is available. If so, the person was informed by letter about the upcoming contact and also given the possibility to answer online. If no contact details were found, the respective respondents were informed by letter about the study, which also included their access details to the online questionnaire.

2) Short description of the survey method:

Individual interviewing (CATI or CAWI)

• CATI: 246 interviews (10.9%)
• CAWI: 2012 interviews (89.1%)

3) Variables completed from an external source: None

Microdata have been controled and validated by Statec once they were received from our subcontractor.

In addition, Statec used Eurostat's validation standards in order to further check the syntax and the consistency of the micro-data.

None

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: None

Grossing up procedures have been applied to: All the respondents

Description of the weighting procedures:

Weighting criteria for the individuals: sex (male, female), age (16-24 years, 25-34 years, 35-44 years, 45-54 years, 55-64 years, 65-74 years), region (Luxembourg-City, Luxembourg-countryside), nationality (Luxembourgish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Belgian, German, others), professional activity (active, not active) and educational level (at most lower secondary education, upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education, tertiary education). The reference figures are supplied from STATEC.

Weighting criteria for the households: the individual's weights were divided by the total number of people aged 16 to 74 in the household.
When several individuals from the same household were drawn into the sample, their individual weights were first summed before dividing by the total number of people aged 16 to 74 in the household.

Not relevant

Not relevant

None