Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (SO SR)

Labour and Education Statistics Department

Lamačská cesta 3/C, 840 05 Bratislava 45, Slovak Republic

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. It covers also sections O, P and Q at national level.

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.

15 118 enterprises with 10 or more persons employed belonging to certain NACE categories at national level.

14 649 enterprises in the target population for European statistics (sections B to N and R to S of NACE Rev. 2).

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

The whole territory of the country.

Data for 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020 are available at national level.

Not applicable.

Number, EUR.

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:

The programme of state statistical surveys

Ensuring the processing of statistical surveys and administrative sources - consolidated (sk pdf) 

Not applicable.

Level of the CVTS aggregation disseminated at national level is sufficient for keeping the data confidentiality.

All statistical information collected, processed and released by Statistical Office of the SR is regulated by the Law on State Statistics. This legal act defines the secrecy and confidential data protection. Without the approval of legal or physical persons providing the relevant individual data, these data cannot be published or announced to anybody or used for other than statistical purposes.

If the number of the statistical units in any cell of the table formed by aggregating the individual data is less than three the data in the concerned cell is considered confidential. Confidential data are under high protection from direct or indirect identification and cannot be disseminated.

Available on the internet website of the SO SR - First release calendar

First release calendar

Data are available for the users in the online database DATAcube - an interactive application administrated by the SO SR. All data are available free of charge without the registration.

Every 5 years.

The CVT data have been submitted exclusively to Eurostat so far.

No news release is scheduled at the moment.

The CVTS results are available only in the online database (see 10.3.).

The key CVTS results are available since 31st October 2022 in the online database DATAcube administrated by the SOSR.

Not applicable.

There is possibility to obtain the CVT microdata in anonymised format for scientific purposes under the strict conditions.

Other data dissemination has not been applied.

Not applicable.

Information on methodology is part of the quality report.

Not applicable.

Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic holds certificate, which confirms that the Office meets requirements of the international standard ISO 9001:2015 in organising, obtaining, processing and providing official statistics according to the current standards. At the same time it provides the evidence that the quality management system implemented in the Office creates appropriate conditions for further improvement of quality of services provided to users and for development of the Office towards higher effectiveness. In addition, the CVT statistics fully respect the provisions of the European Statistics Code of Practice.

The CVTS data questionnaire was fully electronic with built-in controls to ensure the completeness and consistency of the data. A reminder was sent each month since the start of data collection. In case some respondents did not fill the questionnaire on time or in case of dubious or missing data, the respondent was contacted by telephone in order to obtain the data. The survey was mandatory.

Overall, the degree of compliance with the Regulation has increased since launching CVTS 3. Currently, it complies with the quality requirements stressed in this field of statistics. The methodology recommended by Eurostat was fully adopted in CVTS 6.

The strengths of the survey: electronic questionnaire (tested by the staff of the SO SR before launching), very good response rate (93.8%), longer time to complete the questionnaire in comparison to the CVTS 5.

However, some weaknesses occurred: the types of unit non-response were not monitored during the survey.

The key user obtaining data on CVT directly from the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic is Eurostat. Among other users interested in keeping data the most interesting are some ministries and research institutions. Anonymised data could be provided for scientific purposes. 

Currently, there is no information on any low level of user satisfaction concerning completeness (units, variables, breakdowns), accuracy or timeliness of the CVTS.

Our final dataset does cover all NACE sectors, enterprise size groups and variables as requested in the CVTS 6 legislation.

Not applicable.

The overall accuracy of data for CVTS 6 seems to be satisfactory.

Sampling of statistical units has been carried out in accordance with Eurostat recommendations as a stratified sample from the sampling frame (see CVTS 6 manual, chapter 4.3). The sampling frame used was generated from Statistical Business Register. The statistical unit was an enterprise.

Sampling of statistical units has been carried out in accordance with Eurostat recommendations as a stratified sample from the sampling frame. The sampling frame used was generated from Statistical Business Register. The statistical unit was an enterprise.

The gross sample size was determined on the basis of Eurostat recommendations (see CVTS 6 manual, chapter 4.3). The expected share of enterprises performing further vocational training was chosen at 0.5.

The expected response rate was estimated on the basis of the previous survey: at the level of 0.6 for size class 1, 0.7 for size class 2 and 0.8 for size class 3.

The calculated gross sample size was proportionally subdivided into individual stratums created on the basis of Eurostat recommendations (see CVTS 6 manual). Within individual layers, the selection of units was implemented as a simple random selection.

Coefficients of variation for majority of CVTS 6 key indicators, except costs and initial vocational training, were among size groups mostly below 5%. In principle, the same applies to the view across sectors, but the range and CV values were generally higher. The worse figures relate mainly to some economic activities in wholesale or services (e.g. NACE 13 – 16 or 20), where higher diversity in CVT was caused by different conditions for its implementation in the difficult period of the pandemic. In these cases, a small number of valid but relatively high values can be found among a bigger number of small values due to a lack o CVT.

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

See 13.3.1 - 13.3.4 below.

The Statistical Business Register, which is administered by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic on the basis of the Act on State Statistics, was used to create the sampling frame. At present, enterprises and their sub-legal units as well as their local units are registered in the Statistical Business Register. The sampling frame was created by all the reporting units that met the following requirements:

- the responding enterprise has the economic activity prevailing in the NACE group, which belongs to 1 of the 20 NACE Rev.2 categories (B05-B09, C10-C12, C13-C15, C17-C18, C19-C23, C24-C25, C26-C28 + C33, C29-C30, C16 + C31-C32, D-E, F, G (45), G (46), G (47), H, I, J, K (64-65), K (66), L + M + N + R + S). For national purposes, units with economic activity class NACE O, P and Q were attached to this range of economic activity.

- in terms of the size classification of enterprises in the reference period, these were enterprises with 10 or more persons employed

The sampling frame created was in line with the Eurostat recommendations (see CVTS 6 manual, chapter 4.3) for the statistical survey in the reference period of 2020. The total sample size of the reporting units, which were selected from the frame provided for fulfilling the reporting duty, amounted to 2 612 (excluding units with economic activity of NACE classes O, P and Q). After the statistical survey, 67 reporting respondents was considered to be overcoverage, of which 51 employed less than 10 persons. The total number of eligible units was 2 545.

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

Over-coverage rate remained below 3%. 

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

Not applicable.

Efforts were made in questionnaire design and testing, information on interviewer/helpdesk training and other work on measurement error prevention.

The electronic data collection system has simplified and accelerated communication with units. The regional offices of the Statistical Office of the SR sent a letter of intent to the individual companies with an access code and detailed instructions on how to fill in an electronic statement. Units that did not respond were contacted by phone repeatedly. Successful communication contributed to a very good unit non-response rate that has been achieved.

Errors made by respondents have been identified and corrected through complex software controls before data processing.

Total unit non-response rate was very good (6.2%), therefore no measures were needed for adjustment. Among size groups, the lowest rate was reported by enterprises over 500 persons employed (2.0%). The unit non-response rate by NACE was higher than 6.2% in almost half of the sub-groups ranging from 6.4% to 13.4%, mostly due to lack of availability of data during the pandemic period. The lowest value 0.0% was recorded only in NACE 18.

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

There are few variables with at least 10% non-response rate in the CVTS 6. The worst item non-response rate relates to the questions B6e (20.3%) and B5b (43.5%). 

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

Data collection was completely electronic. The integrated statistical information system has enabled a direct communication with enterprises. Responding units were obliged to provide data by making use of Internet, where first set of logic controls warn them against providing incorrect information. Regional statistical offices check and re-contact responding units in case of missing or dubious information. This resulted in significantly reduced non-response or incorrect answers.

Not applicable.

18 – 22 months after the reference year. 

18 months after the reference year (outputs for Eurostat).

22 months after the reference year at national level.

The CVT data was transmitted to Eurostat on time before 30 June 2022.

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

Not applicable.

Comparability of the CVT data has been maintained across all dimensions.

The CVT statistics are comparable as regards the observed area of the Slovak Republic. All regions are covered.

In the CVTS 6 questionnaire there were no deviations from CVTS 6 concepts and definitions (see CVTS 6 manual). However, few variables were added for national needs - related to the COVID-19 issues (in section D and E), and some variables for the OECD - PIAAC employer module (in section A and new section G). 

See table 15.1 "Comparability - geographical" in annex "SK - QR tables CVTS 2020 (excel)".

Not applicable.

The CVT statistics are in general comparable over time. However, data trends were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 6 out of 8 main indicators monitored the growth rate reversed from positive to descending one.

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

CVT data are comparable for the years 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020.

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

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.

At the moment, there is no exact information on cost and burden caused by the CVTS.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Stand-alone sample Survey on Continuing Vocational Training.

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

Every 5 years.

Collection, recording, checking and processing of input data was undertaken by the staff of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. Data collection run by making use of electronic online questionnaire.

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

A set of global checks were used to validate completeness of information, correct coding and formats. Response rate was checked weekly at regional level. Necessary measures were taken in order to increase the response rate by repeated telephone contacts.

Plausibility checks were used to verify correctness of values and logical relations among variables. Following the error messages, the reporting units were contacted for the purpose to verify questionable value or eliminate the error, possibly to refill the missing data.

Brief description of the weighting method:

The final weights were calculated in accordance with the stratification used by selecting the units (20 NACE2 x 3 size classes of enterprises). Primary design weights have been modified with respect to the responses found. CVTS investigations have excluded units with fewer than 10 persons employed. The resulting weights were also calculated considering these changes.

The stratified random sample was used as the estimation method. The software used to calculate the estimation and variance coefficients was the Surveymeans procedure in the SAS statistical system environment.

Imputation rate was between 0.04% - 0.27% in 3 variables - A5, C1tot and C3tot.

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

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

No further comment.