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            COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 198/2006

of 3 February 2006         

implementing Regulation (EC) No 1552/2005 of the European Parliament and the Council on statistics relating to vocational training in enterprises

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,

Having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1552/2005 of the European Parliament and the Council of 7 September 2005 on statistics relating to vocational training in enterprises (1), and in particular Articles 7(3), 8(2), 9(4), 10(2), and 11(3) thereof,

Whereas:

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

Article 1

This Regulation lays down measures to implement Regulation (EC) No 1552/2005 on statistics relating to vocational training in enterprises.

Article 2

The first reference year for which the data are to be collected shall be the calendar year 2005.

Article 3

The specific variables to be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) shall be as specified in Annex I.

Article 4

Sampling and precision requirements, the sample sizes needed to meet these requirements, and the detailed specifications of the NACE and size categories into which the results can be broken down shall be as specified in Annex II.

Article 5

Member States shall be responsible for data checking, error correction, imputation and weighting.

Imputation and weighting of variables shall follow the principles laid down in Annex III. Derogation from these principles shall be fully justified and reported in the quality report.

Article 6

Data shall be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) by the means and in the format specified in Annex IV.

Article 7

Each Member State shall perform a quality evaluation of its data, to be presented in the form of a quality report. The quality report shall be prepared and presented to the Commission (Eurostat) in accordance with the format specified in Annex V.

Article 8

With a view to achieving a high level of harmonisation of the survey results across countries, the Commission (Eurostat) in close cooperation with Member States, shall propose methodological and practical recommendations and guidelines for the implementation of the survey in the form of a ‘European Union Manual’.

Article 9

This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

Done at Brussels, 3 February 2006.

For the Commission

Joaquín ALMUNIA            

Member of the Commission

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(1)OJ L 255, 30.9.2005, p. 1.

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ANNEX I

VARIABLES

Note to the table:

The value ‘core’ and ‘key’ in the column ‘variable group’ are explained in Annex III.

The value ‘ID’ means that the variable is an ‘identification variable’.

In the column ‘variable type’ the value ‘QL’ refers to ‘Qualitative variable’ and ‘QT’ refers to ‘Quantitative variable’.

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ANNEX II

SAMPLE

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(1)OJ L 196, 5.8.1993, p. 1. Regulation as amended by Regulation (EC) No 1882/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 284, 31.10.2003, p. 1).

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ANNEX III

Imputation principals and record weighting

Countries shall take all appropriate measures to reduce item and unit non-response. Prior to imputation countries shall make all reasonable efforts to use other data sources.

Core variables, for which no missing value shall be accepted, nor imputation permitted are:

Key variables, for which every effort should be made to avoid missing values and for which imputation is recommended are:

Imputation for item non-response shall be recommended within the following general limits (Member State experts should at all times apply their professional judgement in the application of these rules):

Quantitative and qualitative variables are identified in Annex 1.

Departures from these principals shall be fully documented and justified in the national quality report.

Member States shall calculate and transmit a weight to be applied to each data record together with any auxiliary variables, which may have been used in the calculation of this weight. These auxiliary variables should be recorded as the variables EXTRA1, EXTRA2, EXTRA3 as necessary. The methodology adopted for establishing the weights shall be detailed in the quality report.

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ANNEX IV

Data file format and transmission rules

Data shall be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) in electronic form by means of a secure data transmission software application (STADIUM/EDAMIS) to be made available by the Commission (Eurostat).

Countries shall transmit two checked data sets to ESTAT:

Both data sets shall contain the variables identified in Annex 1.

Both files shall be presented in comma separated variable (.csv) format. The first record in each file shall be a header record containing the ‘variable names’ as defined in Annex 1. Subsequent records shall detail the values of these variables for each responding enterprise.

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ANNEX V

QUALITY REPORT FORMAT

1.   RELEVANCE

Implementation of the survey and the degree to which statistics meet current and potential user’s needs.

2.   ACCURACY

2.1   Sampling errors

Tables to be provided (broken down by NACE and size classes according to the national sampling plan):

Tables to be provided (broken down by NACE and size classes according to the national sampling plan, however allocation according to the observed enterprise characteristics):

2.2   Non-sampling errors

2.2.1   Coverage errors

Tables to be provided (broken down by NACE and size classes according to the national sampling plan, however allocation according to the observed enterprise characteristics):

2.2.2   Measurement errors

Where appropriate an assessment of errors that occurred at the stage of data collection due for example to:

2.2.3   Processing errors

Description of the data editing process.

2.2.4   Non-response errors

Tables to be provided (broken down by NACE and size classes according to the national sampling plan, however allocation according to the observed enterprise characteristics):

3.   TIMELINESS AND PUNCTUALITY

4.   ACCESSIBILITY AND CLARITY

5.   COMPARABILITY

6.   COHERENCE

Tables to provide (broken down by NACE and size classes according to the national sampling plan, however allocation according to the observed enterprise characteristics):

7.   BURDEN AND BENEFIT

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(1)  The coefficient of variation is the ratio of the square root of the variance of the estimator to the expected value. It is estimated by the ratio of the square root of the estimate of the sampling variance to the estimated value. The estimation of the sampling variance must take into account the sampling design and changes of strata.

(2)  The unit response rate is the ratio of the number of in scope respondents to the number of questionnaires sent to the population selected.

(3)  The item response rate for a variable is the ratio of the number of available data to the number of available and missing data (equal to the number of in scope respondents).

(4)OJ L 344, 18.12.1998, p. 49. Regulation as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 1670/2003 (OJ L 244, 29.9.2003, p. 74).

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