European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

Data cited at:Eurofound Presented data describes living conditions and quality of life in Europe, offering data drawn from the Foundation's surveys on living and working conditions, and from other comparable EU-wide data sources: 1) EQLS (European Quality of Life Survey) - For 24 countries, the sample size was around 1,000. For France, Italy, Poland and the UK the sample size was approximately 1,500. In Germany and Turkey it was 2,000. In most of the countries, the households were selected using a multi-stage, stratified and clustered design with a ‘random walk’ procedure. The overall response rate was 57.9% with significant country variations in response rates ranging from 88% in Romania to 33,5% in the UK; 2) Eurobarometer - Every survey is carried out on national representative samples of around 1,000 respondents aged 15 and over in each country, except Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus, where the samples are of 500 respondents, using face to face interviewing at the respondents' home. The national samples reflect the structure of population aged 15+ in terms of gender, age, regions of a country, settlement size, education level, and marital status; 3) ESS (the European Social Survey) - is representative of all persons aged 15 and over (no upper age limit) resident within private households in each country, regardless of their nationality, citizenship or language. The sample is to be selected by strict random probability methods at every stage and respondents are to be interviewed face to face. Where a sample frame of individuals is not available, countries may use a sample frame of households or of addresses. The minimum effective achieved sample size should be 1,500, after discounting for design effects, or 800 in countries with populations of less than two million; 4) TI (Transparency International) - the TI Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) now ranks 133 countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, drawing on 17 different polls and surveys from 13 independent institutions carried out among business people and country analysts, including surveys of residents, both local and expatriate. In 2002, the CPI included only 102 countries. The large increase in coverage relates to the fact that more valid and reputable sources have been found that can be incorporated; 5) EVS (European Value Study) - Representative national samples of at least 1,000 people, except for Ireland and Luxembourg. Sample size and sampling methods are not uniform. The data provided deals with the objective living conditions and subjective well-being of European citizens.