Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/2094 of 28 October 2022 specifying the technical items of data sets, establishing the technical formats for transmission of information and specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the consumption domain pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance)

This Regulation specifies the technical items of the data sets, the technical formats for the transmission of information from Member States to the Commission (Eurostat), the arrangements for transmission and the content of the quality reports in the consumption domain.

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply: (1) ‘reference period’ means the period to which a particular item of information relates; (2) ‘current calendar year’ means the calendar year of the interview; (3) ‘sample person’ means a member of a private household who is at least 16 years old on 1 January of the current calendar year; (4) ‘sample household’ means a private household containing at least one sample person; (5) ‘age’ of a person means the age in completed years on 1 January of the current calendar year; (6) ‘reference person’ means the household member who is at least 16 years old and who contributes most to the total income of the household; (7) ‘collection unit’ means a household or person with certain characteristics to which or whom the information collected pertains; (8) ‘household respondent’ means the sample person from whom household-level information is obtained; (9) ‘diary’ means a template (electronic or paper) in which households and/or household members record all items of daily consumption and/or expenditure; (10) ‘recording period’ means the period for which a consumption expenditure diary is maintained by the household and/or individual.

Member States shall use the statistical concepts laid down in Annex I. The technical characteristics of variables shall be those laid down in Annex II and refer to: (a) the variable’s identifier; (b) the variable’s name; (c) the modality label and code; (d) the collection unit; (e) the reference period.

1 The target population in the consumption domain shall be private households and all persons composing those households in the territory of the Member State.

2 Information at household and individual level shall be collected or compiled for all household members, as specified in Annex II.

3 Proxy interviews shall be allowed.

1 The reference period shall be one calendar year.

2 The reference period for consumption expenditure shall be the current calendar year. If consumption expenditure is collected retrospectively, i.e. partially in the previous year, it shall be considered as a good proxy for the current year.

3 The income reference period shall be the current calendar year, except for net current monthly household income where the reference period is the current month.

4 The reference periods for variables not referring to consumption expenditure and income shall be those specified in Annex II.

1 The recording period shall be at least 7 days. It shall be up to a maximum of 1 month unless innovative methods to collect data have been used. In duly justified cases, and only to the extent necessary, a recording period longer than 1 month shall be allowed.

2 The recording periods of sample households or persons shall be staggered over the reference period to even out the effect of seasonal and other temporal variations for the sample as a whole. This shall be done by dividing the sample into a number of subsamples and distributing these subsamples in terms of the recording period uniformly over the reference period.

3 At least three attempts shall be made to contact a sample household or person before it is dropped from the survey, unless the following situations occur: (a) the address was impossible to locate; (b) the address was non-residential or unoccupied; (c) the household or person was not found at the address; (d) the household or person was unable to respond (including due to incapacity); (e) a definite refusal of the household or person to cooperate was received; (f) the circumstances endangered the interviewer’s safety.

4 Controlled substitutions of sample households or persons shall be allowed, if one of the situations listed in paragraph 3 (a) to (f) arises, or if the sample household or person has not been reached after three attempts to contact them.

5 Procedures shall be followed to ensure that the process of substitution is controlled to the maximum extent possible. Such procedures shall include using a design that ensures that the selected substitutes closely match the significant characteristics of the households or persons that they replace.

6 The set of sample households or persons for substitution shall be defined prior to data collection. There shall be no substitution with households or persons not belonging to that set.

7 Small parts of a national territory amounting to no more than two per cent of the national population may be excluded from the HBS.

1 The main survey instruments for direct data collection from respondents shall be one or more interviews (household and/or individual interviews) and diary(s) on consumption expenditure maintained by households and/or individuals on a daily basis. For irregular consumption expenditure, data can also be collected retrospectively up to a maximum of 12 months before the interview. Smart tools and sources as well as registers or other methods can be used for data collection.

2 Data provided directly by respondents shall be collected by pen-and-paper method, by computer-assisted methods, including computer-assisted personal interviews, computer-assisted telephone interviews, self-completed computer-based interviews, computer-assisted web interviews including on tablets and smartphones, and by native smartphone applications.

3 The timing of the interview shall be as close as possible to the diary recording period.

1 Imputation, modelling or weighting shall be applied to the data where necessary.

2 Where non-response to total annual net income from all sources, including non-monetary components at household or personal level, results in missing data, appropriate methods for statistical weighting or imputation shall be applied.

3 Where non-response to income component variables, including income in kind from non-salaried activities at household or personal level, results in missing data, appropriate methods of statistical imputation shall be applied.

4 Two methods shall be used to estimate imputed rent depending on the size and structure of the national rental housing market: either the stratification method or the self-assessment method. Preference shall be given to the stratification method based on actual rents (either by direct extrapolation or by means of econometric regression). In the absence of a sufficiently large rental market, the self-assessment method shall be used.

5 The procedure applied to the data shall preserve the variation in and the correlation between variables. Methods that incorporate ‘error components’ into the imputed values shall be preferred to those that simply impute a predicted value.

6 Methods that take into account the correlation structure (or other characteristics of the joint distribution of the variables) shall be preferred to the marginal or univariate approach.

1 Member States shall transmit the microdata that comply with the characteristics of the variables as specified in Annex II in electronic form to the Commission (Eurostat) in accordance with Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 and its Annex V. Monetary consumption shall be transmitted at 5-digit COICOP level; own consumption and cross-border consumption expenditure shall be transmitted at 2-digit COICOP level.

2 Member States shall transmit pre-checked data to the Commission (Eurostat) in the form of microdata files including appropriate weights, using the statistical data and metadata exchange standards set by the Commission (Eurostat) and the Single Entry Point.

1 In addition to the requirements laid down in Article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 and Regulation (EU) 2019/2180 specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports , quality reports by Member States shall comply with the requirements listed in Annex III to this Regulation.

2 Member States shall transmit the quality-related reference metadata required by this Regulation to the Commission (Eurostat), using the statistical data and metadata exchange standards. They shall send the metadata through the Single Entry Point in order to enable the Commission (Eurostat) to retrieve the data by electronic means.

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