Dependent interviewing in the Swedish LFS Krister Näsén Statistics Sweden
Background The LFS in Sweden is made up of 8 consecutive waves, one each quarter 7/8 of the sample was interviewed during the previous quarter Sample size is 29 500 each month Use CATI as survey mode
Dependent interviewing Is done in a very extensive way This is not done primarily to cut interviewing costs Independent interviews takes about 8 minutes 10 seconds Dependent interviews take about 8 minutes It does however cut costs for coding Gives stability to certain variables Basic set-up for all: confirm “status quo” with regards to over-all labour market situation Easing respondent burden – perceived as shorter
Employed persons First wave From registers, the last known place or places of work are added to the interview This includes, name of company, address and postal code So can be seen as somewhat dependent
Employed persons contd.
Employed persons contd.
Employed persons contd.
Employed persons contd.
Employed persons contd. Questions done dependently Place of work Occupation Usual number of hours worked Full time-part time And more… This is done both for main and second job.
Employed persons contd. The register information in the first wave is correct for about 50 percent of all employed The registers ”lag” a bit Using register information also ensure a high quality Between waves about 90 percent still have the same job as in the previous wave This means a lot less manual coding is needed About 50 percent for first wave About 10 percent between waves
Not employed persons For those that are not employed the questionnaires are divided in to three Unemployed Inactive Long term sick Starting questions try to confirm “status quo” of labour market situation The main feature for all three groups are control questions on whether they have worked since last wave If they have not worked between waves, no questions are asked on previous work.
Unemployed, weeks in unemployment Done dependently If the respondent was unemployed at wave t, in wave t+1 dependent questions are asked on whether they are still looking for work If they are still unemployed at wave t+1, 13 weeks are added to the number of weeks in unemployment Gives a very stable line on time in unemployment
Employed looking for other jobs Done independently The same set of questions are used each time Can be compared to the weeks in unemployment for unemployed Same cognitive challenge to give an accurate answer as the unemployed Very different results Different situations which might effect the comparison
Weeks looking for other job
Weeks in unemployment
Recruitment statistics For both employed and not employed persons we do recruitment statistics For the employed how they found their new job For not employed how they found their job Enabled by dependent interviewing, easy to do follow up during the interview when someone has found or changed job