Statistical surveys of the CZSO

Statistical surveys in the Czech Republic are in compliance with Act No.89/1995 Coll., on the State Statistical Service, as amended, conducted by the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) and other Authorities of the State Statistical Service. The list of statistical surveys is published annually in the form of a Decree on the Programme of Statistical Surveys. Based on the Decree the reporting duty arises. A basic overview of the number of surveys is given in the table below.
 

Table 1: Overview of statistical surveys with the reporting duty in 2020–2024

Surveys of the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO)

a) Surveys with reporting duty (based on the CZSO Decree on the Programme of Statistical Surveys)

Statistical surveys can be divided into the following areas:

• Business (economic) statistics – within the business statistics there are two survey systems. The so called SBS for annual surveys and the STS for short-term surveys. The surveys are focused mainly on economic and labour indicators, complemented by some other indicators from sectoral statistics. In both of these systems, questionnaires and their annexes are „tailor-made“ for individual businesses according to the character of their economic activity and other various parameters. All that is prepared in such a way, that one business does not need to fill in the data duplicately in more questionnaires, or to fill in the same indicators (e.g. for all quarters and at the same time) for the entire year.
  The SBS system includes 8 annual surveys, 2 of which are determined exclusively for financial and insurance activities, 1 for non-profit institutions, 1 for health insurance companies, 1 for government institutions and 3 for all sectors (1 of which focuses exclusively on total labour costs). The individual SBS survey annexes are always focused on a specific area, e.g. annex on non-financial assets, annex on financial assets and liabilities, annex on revenues, costs, total assets and complementary indicators, annexes focusing on indicators specific to a particular sector/industry (CZ-NACE activity), etc.
  The STS system includes 8 surveys, 5 of which are quarterly and 3 are monthly; 1 survey is exclusively for financial activities, 1 for health insurance companies, 1 for government and public institutions, 1 for trade and services, 1 for industry, 1 for construction and 2 for all sectors (1 of which focuses only on labour indicators).
• Sectoral statistics – surveys from sectoral statistics are designated for businesses, which deal with a given activity or it is their principal activity.
• Agriculture and forestry – includes 7 surveys which are focused on crop production (e.g. data on crop areas, quantities harvested, fertiliser consumption, stocks and sales of crop products, production estimates for selected crops, etc.) and 5 surveys which are focused on livestock production (number of individual species of livestock by age category and sex, data on the breeding and performance of cattle, poultry, pigs, number and weight of slaughtered animals, etc.). Agricultural statistics also include the questionnaire for classification of a unit to the Agroregister (identification data, data on the use of agricultural land and numbers of livestock kept are collected). An integrated agricultural survey is carried out on a multiannual basis, focusing on data on the size and structure of entities, their equipment, production orientation, off-farm and complementary activities and agri-environmental characteristics. The forestry sector is covered by 1 survey (balance of uncultivated land, data on afforestation/reforestation, log supply, processed forest biomass, areas used and related sawmilling production).
• Industry, construction and energy – in the area of industry and construction, in addition to business statistics, 1 annual survey is carried out on industry (covering, for example, the production of industrial goods and services, stock levels, sales, construction work and non-industrial services, material consumption, etc.). In the construction sector, 4 surveys are carried out (2 of them are in the form of building authority returns, namely on building or dwelling completions, building notifications and permits, buildings and dwellings, 2 surveys focus on construction work, its structure by type of work, directions of construction, location of construction, etc.). In the energy sector, there are 2 monthly surveys on petroleum, petroleum products and biofuels, 6 annual surveys on fuel and energy consumption and fuel stocks, on electricity and gas supply, on fuel sources and distribution, on energy upgrading processes, on fuel and energy consumption for the production of selected products and on electricity and heat production and distribution.
• Tourism – includes 1 monthly and 1 quarterly survey, in which the following data are collected: the territorial identification of an accommodation facility, the category of the facility, its activity and seasonality, the number of guest arrivals and overnight stays by the guest's country of residence, the average number of rooms and beds available, the number of places for tents and caravans, the number of rooms for wheelchair users, the number of occupied rooms, the capacity for holding congresses, the number of congress events and their participants.
• Environment, secondary raw materials, water management – expenditure on environmental protection is dealt with in an annual survey, which monitors expenditure on the acquisition of fixed assets for environmental protection, sources of financing, economic benefits from environmental protection activities. On secondary raw materials, an annual survey is carried out, which monitors the quantity of secondary raw materials  produced and consumed. There are also 2 surveys on water management which focus on basic data on water flows, water abstractions and discharges by users, pollution discharged into watercourses, data on water supply and sewerage systems, production and supply of drinking water by users, data on wastewater disposal and treatment, wastewater treatment plants and sludge management.
• Cultural statistics – the cultural sector includes one annual survey on audiovisual media services and radio broadcasting, which monitors, for example, the number of broadcast hours  and their programming mix, predominant activity, income/revenue, expenditure/costs, etc.
• Cross-sectional statistics – they are designed for businesses of all industries and have specific criteria for inclusion of the businesses in a survey; they include the research and development survey (which identifies for example the structure of research and development (R&D) personnel broken down by gender, qualification and occupation, the structure of own R&D expenditure including sources of funding, purchases of R&D services from other entities, R&D results and their commercial exploitation, etc.), surveys on licences (purchase and sale of licences by the type of licence agreement, country of contractor, production code for classification of licence agreement, number of licence agreements concluded and royalties paid, estimate of purchase of new licences) and questionnaire on the use of ICT (basic data on distribution, method and extent of use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and systems, use of ICT in enterprises for exchange of information and services with the public and administration, barriers to its use, environmental impact of ICT, costs and investment in information technology, data on employees using ICT, etc.).
• Demography – a total of four statistical reports (on marriages, births, deaths, divorces), which are submitted by the municipal authorities responsible for maintaining such registers, or by health institutions and district courts.
• Price statistics – there are 25 surveys in total, mostly monthly surveys. In price statistics surveys, the following are surveyed: prices of selected representatives from the areas of agriculture, forestry, industry, construction, energy, market services, retail sales of food, consumer goods and services, rent and real estate and external trade. In addition to prices of selected representative products, sales of selected products or services are also collected. Most of the surveys are carried out through statistical reports. The monitoring of consumer prices is mainly carried out by means of a direct survey. Retail prices of foodstuffs and selected consumer goods are collected through scanner data.
• Foreing/External trade – the Foreign Trade Survey has a quarterly frequency and collects data on imports and exports of services. The survey is designed for all businesses which import or export services with the exception of tourism industry.
• Business cycle surveys – a total of five surveys carried out in the corporate sector provide information on expected trends in the main areas of the business economics in the near future. They are based on the views of entrepreneurs operating in the area of interest, i.e. industry, construction, trade, selected services and investment. They discuss future prospects through sub-questions (on production or business activity, demand, prices, credits, employment, competition, factors limiting business conditions, financial indicators are monitored, but also sales and stocks of goods, exports, imports, acquisition of fixed assets, directions and types of investment, etc.).
• Registers – there are two surveys that collect data which characterize legal and natural persons, their identification, characteristics of performed activity, identification data on local units, the number of employees, way of foundation, foreign capital participation and the main activity of the local unit. The survey serves mainly for the purpose of updating data in the Business Register and it is determined for selected legal or natural persons recorded in the Register.

Most of the surveys are carried out annually. Some surveys are conducted once in a few years (e.g. the continuing vocational training survey and the survey on orchard every 5 years, the structural survey in agriculture every 10 years, the questionnaire on innovation every 2 years, etc.). Most of these surveys are carried out on the basis of EU regulations.
 

The following table gives an overview of the number of statistical surveys according to the frequency of surveys carried out by the CZSO.
 

Table 2: Statistical surveys with reporting duty by periodicity

Samples of statistical reports for individual statistical surveys listed in the Statistical Surveys Programme (available only in Czech) can be found here: https://apl.czso.cz/pll/vykazy/pdf1. These sample reports are not for data collection, but only for viewing and getting an idea of the form and content of the report.

b) Surveys without reporting duty – these are surveys of households and individuals. They are not included in the Decree on the Statistical Surveys Programme. The surveys are voluntary and data collection is usually carried out by a CZSO interviewer visiting the selected households directly. The household surveys comprise of a total of 10 surveys. 6 are regular surveys, 4 of which are annual (EU-SILC, HBS, HFCS and ICT) and 2 are quarterly (LFSS and TSS), and 4 are 'exceptional' surveys, where the survey is carried out once every few years (EHIS, VŠPO, ENERGO and AES). All household surveys are designed so that the statistics based on the collected data are internationally comparable.

Sample surveys in households carried out by the CZSO are divided into two basic groups as follows:

Integrated living conditions surveys (ILCS), which include the following surveys:

• The sample survey within the programme of the European Union – Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) – the basic purpose of the survey is to map the current living situation of households in the Czech Republic, their socio-demographic structure, the type, quality and financial intensity of housing, the equipment of households with durable goods and the working, material and health conditions of persons living in households.
• Household Budget Survey (HBS – abbreviated as "SRÚ" in Czech) – the survey monitors expenditure and provides information on its value and structure of consumption expenditure of private households. The HBS is also useful for measuring impact of various market factors (e.g. supply and demand, price change) on expenditure structure and consumption habits of households.
• A sample survey on financial situation of households (Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS – abbreviated as "FSD" in Czech) – the survey is aimed at mapping the situation of Czech households in terms of finance and property. From this data the risk of overall poverty of households is calculated. Furthermore, the survey is a basis for finding out about the household‘s behavior as to the use of financial market instruments, level of its financial indebtedness, etc.

​Integrated Household Survey (IHS), which includes the following surveys:

• Labour Force Sample Survey (LFSS) – the purpose of this survey is to obtain regular information on the labour market situation (the current employment structure by gender, age, qualification, sector and nature of employment). Data on the amount of time worked, concurrent employment and labour mobility are also collected. The LFSS also collects information on unemployment, for example on how and how long it took to find a new job and data on the last job.
• Sample Survey on ICT Usage in Households and by Individuals (ICT – abbreviated "VŠIT" in Czech) – the aim of the survey is to obtain regular information on how households and the people living in them use the internet, mobile phones and other information technologies. It also assesses their digital skills, what they search for on the internet, how often they shop online and whether they underestimate internet security.
• Tourism sample survey (TSS) – the purpose of the survey is to obtain regular information on the travel habits of the population of the Czech Republic. For example, what destinations people travelled to, for how long, what type of accommodation and transport they used and the detailed financial costs of their trips.
• A sample survey on energy consumption in households (ENERGO) – the main objective of the survey is to obtain up-to-date data on household fuel and energy consumption by use for specific activities. The basic socio-demographic characteristics of the selected household, the basic technical parameters of the dwelling, the fuel and energy consumption used in the household, information on the energy efficiency of selected appliances, and fuel consumption are monitored. The survey takes place at six-year intervals, with the last survey planned for in 2021 and the next data collection taking place in 2027.
• Adult Education Survey (AES) – this survey looks at the level of education among people aged 18–69. The survey also includes data on the extent to which adults participate in schools or universities (in formal education) and what type of education they attend – courses, training, workshops, private lessons (in non-formal education) or self-study. Obstacles and difficulties that prevent people from learning or questions on foreign language skills are also of interest. The survey takes place at six-year intervals, the last survey was conducted in 2022 and the next data collection will take place in 2028.
• European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) – this survey focuses on the health status of the population, but also on the use of health care (doctor visits, hospital admissions) and on selected aspects of lifestyle closely related to health. The purpose of the survey is to complement routinely collected data on the functioning of the health system and the use of health care. The survey takes place at six-year intervals, with the last survey taking place in 2019 and the next data collection planned for 2025.
• Sample Survey on Persons with Disabilities (PSD – abbreviated "VŠPO" in Czech) – focuses on people who, as a result of an adverse health condition or health problem, are limited in their normal activities for a longer period of time. The main purpose of the survey is to obtain information on the number of such persons and their structure in terms of age, gender, economic activity and education. In addition, the survey is used to find out what had caused the health problems, whether these people work, what specific activities make difficulties for people with long-term health problems, whether they use compensatory aids or receive help from a carer. The survey is conducted at five-year intervals, with the last survey taken place in 2018 and the next data collection is taking place in 2023 and 2024.

​More detailed information on individual household surveys can be found here: https://www.czso.cz/csu/vykazy/household-surveys.