Comparability

Comparability - geographical

No comparable statistics on the background of participants in folk high school courses are assumed to exist. Eurostat and OECD do not have any statistics on folk high schools, but Statistics Sweden and Statistics Norway publish statistics on participation in folk high school courser. The results from these statistics are not directly comparable to the Danish statistics because of varying definitions of eg. course length. In Sweden, however, statistics about participants are found by origin, gender, geography and age.

Comparability over time

There are statistics on students at folk high schools dating back to 1901, but the current statistics on participants are comparable back to 2005. The statistics of the participants background are comparable from 2016 and onwards.

Coherence - cross domain

Comparability between adult education, fulltime education and folk high schools: Participants at folk high school courses are published in the Statistics Denmark's register of adult education and continuing training.

The statistics are based on Statistics Denmark's course register and are therefore comparable to statbank tables for the total adult and continuing education area. The total number of participants full-time equivalents can be compared with the sum of participants in VEUHOJ11 and in VEUHOJ21. However, small discrepancies may occur due to rounding of decimals when calculating the number of full-time equivalents. There may be marginal deviations with regard to gender, which is due to continuous revision of the source registers. As the definition of short-medium and long course differs from the above-mentioned tables, the results cannot be compared separately. VEUHOJ11 and VEUHOJ21 base the length of the stay on the number of reported course weeks and do not use the category medium courses, which is merged with short courses. In addition, the tables are based on different value sets and variables, so a comparison based on individual excerpts distributed among variables is not possible. As VEU20 uses a different definition of the school year, the statistics cannot be compared with data from this with respect to school year, while there is good consistency in using the calendar year. The tables will be updated by adjustments and corrections in the course register.

The distribution of age among the participants is not directly compared with the tables VEUHOJ11 and VEUHOJ21. The difference is because these statistics describe the age of participants at folk high schools at the beginning of their college stay, whereas the age of VEUHOJ11 and VEUHOJ21 is fixed from the cut-off date of September 30 of the reference year in which the participants completed their folk high school course. When comparing the statistics, the participants will typically have a higher age in VEUHOJ11 and VEUHOJ21 compared with these tables.

Coherence - internal

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