Comparability

Comparability - geographical

The statistics is carried out in collaboration with the EU-commission, and the same survey is carried out in other EU-countries. Please refer to DG ECFIN.

Comparability over time

The first tendency survey was conducted for the 1st quarter of 1970. Until the 3rd quarter of 1974, the questions concerned completed construction projects, volume of orders and employment analyzed by new buildings, including extensions, repair and maintenance and civil engineering. Questions concerning the shortage of manpower analyzed by skilled and unskilled manual workers were also included in the survey. From the 4th quarter questions concerning completed construction projects were excluded and the questions concerning manpower were also changed. This implied that questions concerning shortage of manpower were divided into construction and civil engineering only. The composite short-term indicator was published for the first time in conjunction with the tendency survey conducted for the 1st quarter of 1984. The composite short-term indicator was seasonally adjusted for the first time for the 4th quarter of 1996. As of the 3rd quarter of 1985 carpenters and joiners were classified to the same group. As of 1st quarter of 1987 questions concerning volume of orders were divided into construction and civil engineering. Furthermore, the question concerning building activity limitations was also extended. As of January 2006 the survey was expanded to contain all private enterprises within the construction industry whose activities are classified to F of Nace rev. 1., so that the survey at present contains all classified to F of Nace rev. 2. As of January 1998 the Danish tendency survey was harmonized with the tendency surveys conducted in the other EU member states. This implies that the tendency survey is now conducted monthly. Furthermore, new questions have been added to the tendency survey concerning enterprises' sales and prices. Also a division of all questions relating to residential buildings, other buildings, total construction, civil engineering and total building and construction projects was introduced, however terminated by the end of 2010. The statistics are generally comparable over time, except were questions have been changed. As of October 2012, the number of strata has changed from seven to three (1-9, 10-49 and> 50 employees) and the account base has shifted from the register: "Number of Persons Employeed in the Construction Industry" to the "Business Register" (ESR) employment data, which is based on "E-income" data. These changes are not to affecting the results significantly compared to the previous time series.

As of March 2013 the order of answer options to the question about production limitations is changed. Now the answer "no limitation" is the last option to check instead of the first, as it was before. This may have led to lower percentages of "no limitation" and higher percentages of "insufficient demand" the following few month.

As of July 2013 the composite short-term indicator is no longer seasonally adjusted directly but indirectly. This implies that the two under lying indicators, employment expectations and stock of orders, are each seasonally adjusted before the averaging into the composite.

As of August 2014 some phrasings in the questionnaire have been revised in order to harmonize fully to the guidelines of DG ECFIN. Previous, questions of this type: "Regarding Building activity, how was the development the last 3 month (e.g. May-July) as compared to the previous 3 month (e.g. February-April)? please tick either less; unchanged or bigger". Now there are no comparison between two 3-month periods, and instead is asked: "How has your building activity developed over the past 3 month? please tick either decreased, unchanged or increased" The results are believed to be the same, and no data break has been detected. The same change has been made for questions concerning the future development over the next 3 month.

Furthermore the answer possibilities regarding Overall order book has been changed from less than normal; normal or larger than normal to *not sufficient; sufficient or more than sufficient. This is supposed to have led to break in data.

Coherence - cross domain

Data from the tendency survey for the construction industry supplement the other short-term statistics relating to this area. Furthermore, Statistics Denmark conducts the tendency survey in collaboration with the EU Commission. Similar surveys are conducted by the other EU member states. This implies that current conditions in Denmark are compared to conditions in other EU member states.

Coherence - internal

The data set of the survey is consistent.