## 2 Methodology and Data
### Data
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline
**Variable** & **Description** & **Values** & **Proportion** \\ \hline marital status & marital status of jobseeker & single & 51.51\% \\  & marital status of jobseeker & married & 37.21\% \\  & & divorced & 9.36\% \\  & & widow & 1.50\% \\  & & unknown & 0.42\% \\ \hline permanent residence & permanent residence of the jobseeker & Eastern Slovakia & 33.79\% \\  & (part of Slovakia) & Western Slovakia & 32.13\% \\  & & Central Slovakia & 26.72\% \\  & & Bratislava region & 7.36\% \\ \hline education & highest achieved education of the & non-finished primary & 28.32\% \\  & jobseeker & primary & 30.03\% \\  & & lower secondary vocational & 13.04\% \\  & & secondary vocational & 5.16\% \\  & & complete secondary & 0.72\% \\  & & general secondary & 0.17\% \\  & & higher vocational & 8.86\% \\  & & university 1 st & 0.57\% \\  & & university 2 nd & 2.55\% \\  & & university 3 rd & 9.25\% \\  & & NA & 1.31\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 84.53\% \\ school leaver & disadvantaged jobseeker & yes & 15.47\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 84.08\% \\ over 50 years & disadvantaged jobseeker & yes & 15.92\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 68.18\% \\ long-term unemployed & disadvantaged jobseeker & yes & 31.82\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 97.13\% \\ health & & yes & 2.87\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no paid job & \\  & & yes & 44.40\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 86.19\% \\ low education & & yes & 13.81\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 99.58\% \\ organisational reasons & & yes & 0.42\% \\ \hline disadvantage: & & no & 99.70\% \\ others & & Yes & 0.30\% \\ \hline children & & & 87.78\% \\  & number of children of the jobseeker & 1 & 6.57\% \\  & & 2 & 3.85\% \\  & & 3 & 1.16\% \\  & & 4 or more & 0.64\% \\ \hline reason of exclusion & reason of exclusion from the database & employment & 54.25\% \\  & of jobseekers & relevant reason of exclusion & 34.78\% \\  & & non-co-operation & 10.97\% \\ \hline intervention & intervened jobseeker & No & 65.95\% \\  & & Yes & 34.05\% \\ \hline previous registrations & number of all previous registrations & 0 & 64.94\% \\  & & 1 & 22.51\% \\  & & 2 & 7.02\% \\  & & 3 & 2.47\% \\  & & 4 & 1.11\% \\  & & 5 or more & 1.95\% \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: _Cont._Table 2 contains basic descriptive characteristics, such as the _mean_ (average value of the variable), _median_ (middle value among the values arranged in ascending order), _mode_ (value with the most frequent occurrence), _minimum_ and _maximum_ value, _range_ (difference between the maximum and minimum values), and _standard deviation_ (basic characteristic of the variability and square root of the variance, which is an average square difference from the mean). The last row of Table 2 presents the characteristics of the target variable before its categorisation into the mentioned four categories according to the duration of the status \"unemployed\". We would like to emphasise that each case in the dataset represents one individual registration in the database. It is important to note that some jobseekers have multiple registrations during the period under review (see variable \"previous registrations\"; e.g., almost 65% of jobseekers were registered just once, the rest more than once). Therefore, we included variables such as the number of previous registrations, the number of previous non-interventions, the number of previous interventions, the cumulative previous registrations in days, and the average unemployment in days in the data. These variables capture the number or duration of all previous registrations or interventions in which jobseekers participated, as they are expected to impact their unemployment. All the variables mentioned above (both qualitative and quantitative) will serve as inputs for the prediction models of unemployment duration, i.e., the target variable in this study is the _duration of registration_ in the database of jobseekers. This duration is calculated as the difference between the start date and the end date of registration.