STATISTICAL OFFICE OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC (SOSR).

Department of Population Living Standards Statistics

Social Statistics and Demography Section

STATISTICAL OFFICE OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC

LAMAČSKÁ CESTA 3/C

840 05 BRATISLAVA 45

The EU survey on the use of ICT in households and by individuals is an annual survey conducted since 2002. In Slovakia, 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 and green ICT.

National language:

Zisťovanie o využívaní informačných a komunikačných technológií v domácnostiach a u jednotlivcov v roku 2022

English:

The usage of Information-communication Technologies (ICT) in households and by individuals

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

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

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.

No deviations between national survey and Eurostat scope.

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:  1 852 059
• Number of individuals:  4 131 184

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

The Slovak Republic: Surveyed households were selected so that they were representative for each of 8 regions of SR (NUTS3). The survey was done on the whole territory of the Slovak Republic.

Year 2022

Not applicable

Percentages of ‘Households’ and Percentages of ‘Individuals’

Reference period for the ICT usage in households and by individuals will be last three months before the interview 2022.

In general, data refer to the first quarter of the reference year.

The survey lasted from 1 April to the end of May 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:  

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic conducted a survey on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in accordance with the Decree of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic no. 292/2020 Coll., which issues the Program of State Statistical Surveys for the years 2021 to 2023 in randomly selected households in the territory of the Slovak Republic.

The data will be shared in the form of a publication 'ICT 2022' on the website of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic

National legislative measures:

The protection of confidential data is regulated by Act no. 540/2001 Collection (coll.) on state statistics, as amended.

The protection of personal data is regulated by Act no. 18/2018 Coll. on the protection of personal data and on the amendment of certain laws.

Anonymizing data:

Principles of Release and Provision of Statistical Information.

By this information, the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (SOSR) offers to the interested persons the procedures of release and provision of statistical information, the characteristics of the basic release forms and individual products and services, the definition of principles of relationships with the users of statistical information, principles of product and service provision, price policy of standard and non-standard outputs on the basis of requests. The release and provision of statistical information is conducted in compliance with the Act (NC SR) No 540/2001 Coll. on state statistics, as amended.

The release and provision of statistical information have to fulfil the criteria of the European Statistics Code of Practice, namely the timeliness, accuracy, reliability, relevance, clarity, impartiality, objectivity, professional independence, cost-effectiveness.

There is a release calendar for the statistical outputs and this calendar is publicly accessible on web in Slovak and English. First release calendar 

Catalogue of Publications 2022

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (SOSR) releases ICT data after the survey and related publication to users, which can be downloaded from its website.

Policy on dissemination of the statistical information of the SOSR (hereinafter referred to as “Policy on dissemination”) is a fundamental document in the field of statistical information dissemination. It represents a set of principles applied by the SOSR in dissemination of the statistical information.

The Policy on dissemination supports to fulfilment of the vision of the SOSR which emphasizes professional independence of the Office and customer orientation as well as the fulfilment of its mission: to provide high-quality and objective statistical products and services in order to improve information and intellectual capital of customers. This will help to contribute to risk reduction in decision-making processes and ensure sustainable development of Slovakia.

The Policy on dissemination follows quality policy provisions of the SOSR, which regards customers as the basis for the Office´s existence and their confidence to statistics as a result of the Office´s capability to satisfy the current and expected needs of statistical information users in maintaining impartiality and objectivity.

The Policy on dissemination is defined in accordance with the Act on State Statistics, the development strategy of the SOSR, the information dissemination strategy of Eurostat and European Statistics Code of Practice.

Annual

There is no news release.

Survey on information and communication technologies usage in households 2022

The (aggregated) results of the survey are accessible with a online database.

Data are available online (Eurobase tables) and on Datacube (national webpage of SO SR).

Data are available online (Eurobase tables) and on Datacube (national webpage of SO SR).

For the Households/Individuals survey, microdata were collected on an optional basis until 2010, on a mandatory basis since 2011. Microdata are available for scientific purposes. For more information, one can consult the Eurostat web page Access to micro-data.

All variables collected in the framework of this survey are available in the Comprehensive database (ACCESS format) on the dedicated section Digital economy and society.

An overview of the variables collected/published can be consulted/downloaded from the dedicated section Digital economy and society, see 'Variables collected - Use of ICT in Households and by Individuals (link also in the Annexes).

Not available 

Eurostat: Methodological Manual for the 2022 survey on ICT usage in households and by individuals. 

SOSR:  Methodological guidance for a web-based questionnaire, where basic information for the interviewer and the household was provided. Methodological guidelines for a pdf questionnaire, where basic information was provided for the interviewer and the household. These documents are attached in annexes.

Not available.

Quality Declaration of SO SR

The procedures to promote general quality management principles in the organisation and the quality assurance applied for the survey include the electronic guideline on quality management, which thoroughly describes the quality policy of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. 

The electronic guideline on quality management system is written only in the Slovak language, attached below as annexes.

Based on the mentioned directive, quality of the statistical outputs fulfils the standard quality criteria: relevance, accuracy, reliability, timeliness, punctuality, comparability and coherence.

The main user is the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic, which uses national data on the use of ICT by households and by individuals to compare data across EU countries.

Once a year, a customer satisfaction survey is conducted with the products and services of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic.

All the variables (mandatory and optional) required for transmission have been included in the microdata.

All variables - 100%. 

In generally values of standard errors do not show any important problems and therefore the results can be considered as reliable and representative. There are some small deviations in the group of unemployed persons. Deviation of 3% appears in the groups with small number of respondents.  However, the values are still in the required interval up to 5%. In the future it will be the possibility to enlarge these groups.

SAS software, SURVEYFREQ Procedure

The SURVEYFREQ procedure produces one-way to n-way frequency and cross-tabulation tables from sample survey data. These tables include estimates of population totals, population proportions, and their standard errors. Confidence limits, coefficients of variation, and design effects are also available. The procedure provides a variety of options to customize the table display.

For one-way frequency tables, PROC SURVEYFREQ provides Rao-Scott chi-square goodness-of-fit tests, which are adjusted for the sample design. A null hypothesis of equal proportions for a one-way frequency table can be tested, or a custom null hypothesis proportions for the test can be set. For two-way tables, PROC SURVEYFREQ provides design-adjusted tests of independence, or no association, between the row and column variables. These tests include the Rao-Scott chi-square test, the Rao-Scott likelihood ratio test, the Wald chi-square test, and the Wald log-linear chi-square test. For tables, PROC SURVEYFREQ computes estimates and confidence limits for risks (row proportions), the risk difference, the odds ratio, and relative risks.

PROC SURVEYFREQ computes variance estimates based on the sample design used to obtain the survey data. The design can be a complex multistage survey design with stratification, clustering, and unequal weighting. PROC SURVEYFREQ provides a choice of variance estimation methods, which include Taylor series linearization, balanced repeated replication (BRR), and the Jackknife.

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).

The method followed is the balanced repeated replication with balanced half-samples. The tool used was the SAS software, PROC SURVEYFREQ.

The SOSR uses multiple variance estimation in imputing variance.

To account for the effect of calibration on variance methods, the SOSR prepared a Calif software - web application in the R software open source tool for calibrating the weights of statistical surveys (web page only in Slovak).

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):   2406

Estimated proportion (in %):   76.7

Standard error (in percentage points):   0.77

Details of the breakdowns are available in the file 'Sampling_error_SIMS_2022_SK_an2' in the Annexes. 

See more details on non-sampling error below.

The SO SR used the 2011 census, which has not been updated. In the future, it is planned to use the support of the 2021 census with annual updates. Quantitative evaluation of the coverage error of the sampling frame is not possible.

The proportion of units accessible via the frame that do not belong to the target population is 0.65.

Not requested in the ICT survey.

1)       Measurement errors: 

The error may occur in the data record during the collection; after verification by the respondent with the respondent, the error will be corrected. 

2)       Questionnaire design and testing:

The questionnaire is prepared according to the Eurostat model. The first versions are commented on by the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic. Before starting the ICT survey, the questionnaire is tested by the interviewers so that there are no errors in the questionnaire.

3)       Interviewer training: 

Before the ICT survey, interviewers are trained by online video conferencing. They have detailed methodological guidelines prepared on the basis of a methodological manual from Eurostat. The documentation (in Slovak language) is available in the Annexes.

4)       Proxy interview rates:  

No proxy.

Information about non-respondents:  No non-response errors

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:   0.20
• Individuals (aged 16-74):   0.20

 Comments:

 Response rate on NUTS3 level:

1)       Methods used for minimizing unit non-response: 

The following general rules for all selected units are used: before the survey, the promotional campaign takes place (on the national level, but especially at the level of the selected municipalities).

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

The correction factor is used in the weighting procedure.

3)       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): No

4)       Substitution rate (in %): No

Items with low response rates and their observed rates (in %): Not applicable

In generally values of standard errors do not show any important problems and the SO SR can therefore consider the results as reliable and representative. 

There are some small deviations in the group of unemployed persons. Deviation of 3% appears in the groups with small number of respondents.

However, the values are still in the required interval up to 5%. In the future, it will be possible to enlarge these groups.

Not requested for ICT Survey

The date of date dissemination at national level was the end of November 2022.

No time lags

No time lags

The European model questionnaire is generally used in the Member States. Occasionally, due to (small) differences in translation, in reference periods, in the survey vehicle used, in non-response treatment or different routing through national questionnaires, some results for some countries may be of reduced comparability. 

Not relevant

Possible limitations in the use of data for comparisons over time: Not relevant

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:

There are no deviations in the mandatory questions of the questionnaire.

Annexed files “Questionnare_IKT_2022_SK_english_version_an3.PDF” and “Questionnare_IKT_2022_SK_slovak_version_an4.PDF“ contains questionnares in Slovak and English language. All mandatory questions were included in a survey.

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

There are no deviations in the optional questions.

Annexed files “Questionnare_IKT_2022_SK_english_version_an3.PDF” and “Questionnare_IKT_2022_SK_slovak_version_an4.PDF“ contains questionnares in Slovak and English language. All optional questions were included in a survey.

Additional questions introduced in the national questionnaire:  

One question have been added to Eurostat questionnaire.The Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic has requested to include one question in the ICT questionnaire. The question aims to obtain an indicator of the percentage of the persons who own a mobile phone. This request was proposed in connection with the questionnaire of the World Telecommunication Union, where the SO SR provides data. The question F6: Do you own a mobile phone? The question includes not only one's own mobile phone, but also a phone supplied by employers that can be used for personal purposes (to make personal calls, internet access, etc.).

Effects of deviations from the routing used in the Eurostat model questionnaire:  

All statistics are coherent within the dataset.

The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic releases the data in the form of a publication only after approval by Eurostat.

No comment

Not relevant

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

Name and short description of the sampling frame or register used: Sampling frame are data from 2011 Population and Housing Census. 

The survey is a stand-alone survey and is mandatory. 

There are any no known shortcomings in terms of timeliness.

Number of sampling stages:  

Surveyed households were selected so that they were representative for each of 8 regions of Slovakia (NUTS3). The sample was created individually for each region in two stages. Firstly, the municipalities representing seven size categories (on the base of number of population) in each region were selected. Secondly, in these municipalities households representing five household categories (on the base of their members number) were selected at random.

The final gross sample size was 4096 households. One individual in each household was randomly selected to answer the questions in the second part of questionnaire. The survey covered all required age categories, i.e. individuals of the age from 16 to 74.

First stage – Stratification:

The stratification variables at the first stage are Geographical stratification: Regions and municipalities by number of population.

First stage – Unit:

The sampling unit at the first stage are municipalities.

Self-representing primary sampling unit: No

Second stage – Unit: No

Ultimate stage - Unit: The sampling unit at the ultimate stage are households.

Annual

1) Methods used to gather data:

Form of the survey in the examined households:

Web questionnaire (65.5 %), Personal visit (24.1 %) and Telephone survey (10.4 %)

2) Short description of the survey method:

In accordance with the measures taken against the spread of COVID-19, the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic collected data in the first phase electronically.

The electronic form was available on the website of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic.

Households that did not fill in the electronic version of the questionnaire, the interviewers visited the staff of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic after improving the pandemic situation and filled in a paper version of the questionnaire.

3) Variables completed from an external source: Not applicable

Data processing at decentralised level: Date processing at decentralised level is a competency of the Department of sample survey statistics in Banska Bystrica. The role of this department is to process data of all ICT 2022 questionnaires completed and the finalization of regional datasets and their transmission to the Central Statistical Office. Data from web questionnaires were be sent directly to the Department of Population and Living Standards at the Central Statistical Office. After a first check, the web questionnaires were transferred to Banská Bystrica for the primary processing.

Data processing at centralised level: Final data processing at centralised level is realised by the Department of Population and Living Standards at the Central Statistical Office. The role of this department is the preparation and the elaboration of the final database of the ICT survey. The final database, as well as the metadata and quality reports, are then transmitted to Eurostat according to Eurostat’s quality requirements and standards.

Since 2015, Blaise ICT software has been used for data recording in Slovakia. In the Blaise program there are procedures used for checking and validating the source data.

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: Not applicable

Grossing up procedures have been applied to:

Grossing-up procedures for households:

Representativeness of the data for the year 2022 was ensured by constructing weights. The final weights were calibrated using software R+. External sources were selected for calibration: estimation of the household structure by number of members in the region. Representativeness of the population in Slovakia was ensured by using the weights by the major demographic indicators. Using the weights was ensured representativeness of the population in Slovakia by the major demographic indicators. The following calibration variables were used at household level: number of households by number of members in administrative regions.

Grossing-up procedures for individuals:

Representativeness of the data for the year 2022 was ensured by constructing weights. The final weights were calibrated using software R+.

External sources were selected for calibration: the population structure by age and gender in the region, by achieved level of education and employment activity. Representativeness of the population in Slovakia was ensured by using the weights by the major demographic indicators.
The following calibration variables were used at individual level: numbers of persons by age groups, sex, achieved level education and employment activity in the administrative regions.

Not relevant

Not relevant