IBUC 2006 Abstract

The New Adopted German Microcensus and the Integrated Labour Force Survey - User Specified Solutions with Blaise
Stephan Matthias ; Statistisches Bundesamt, Germany

With about 820 000 surveyed persons microcensus is the largest official household survey in
Germany. It integrates the Labour Force Survey of the European Union, which has to be
accomplished in all member states.

Up to and including 2004 microcensus data were surveyed once a year on a specific week under review. Due to
social changes, particularly with regard to individualisation and mobilisation of social circumstances, these onetimes-
a-year-surveyed data, lost more and more relevance. As these changes take place very fast these data are
no longer appropriate to, reliably reflect the real circumstances.

Furthermore the Council regulation on Labour Force Survey of 1998 stipulates an equal distribution of interviews
over all calendar weeks of the year as well as the announcement of quarterly and yearly average data. Therefore
the heads of agencies decided in November 2001 that the microcensus has to be extended to the whole year with
a constantly moving week. The new microcensus law implements this resolution. In 2005 survey has been realized
for the first time in accordance with the new regulations. The new microcensus particularly aimed at a gain in
topicality and quality of the data and at the implementation of the EU Council’s regulation on Labour Force Survey.

The improvement in actuality will be achieved by analysis and publications of quarterly data (for some parts of the
questionnaire monthly analysis are planned as well) as well as by a fast availability of the data. The improvement in
quality will be achieved by the aid of an area-wide use of Laptops, an improvement of the professional quality for
the honorary interviewers and their reduction. As a result of these comprehensive innovations, census and the
process organization had to undergo a radical change.

This paper points out how we solved the problem of organizing the new microcensus by the help of user specified
developed supporting programs in Blaise and Manipula. Due to the federal structure, we particularly had to take
into account the organizational and technical differences like different operating systems and data processing
software. I hope you will get a valuable insight into the new German Microcensus.

Contact: stephan.matthias@destatis.de