Download: Questionnaire of the e-Business Survey 2002 (*.xls, 237 KB)

All figures about ICT and e-business presented in this section of the website (in the various tables and databases offered for download) are results of the European e-Business Survey, a cornerstone of the monitoring activities of the e-Business W@tch. The field work of this enterprise survey was carried out in June and July 2002 by INRA Germany in co-operation with its international partner organisations using computer-aided telephone interview (CATI) technology. The decision maker in the enterprise targeted by the survey was normally the person responsible for ICT within the company, typically the IT manager. Alternatively, especially in small enterprises which do not have a separate IT unit, the managing director or owner was interviewed. In total, about 10,000 interviews with decision makers in European enterprises were conducted.
Two different kinds of totals have been calculated: A EU-4 total consisting of the results from Germany, France, Italy and the UK and a sector total consisting of all countries included in the survey of a particular sector. For reasons of comparability, the overview tables build on the data for EU-4, i.e. Germany, France, Italy and UK. In these countries, all 15 sectors have been surveyed. They represent more than 60% of the market volume in any of the 15 sectors and in most sectors actually more than 70%.
Another important note concerns the weighting principles. In the overview tables, figures (if not stated otherwise) are presented as employment-weighted data. This means that figures should be read as "enterprises representing …% of employees". To give an example: The indicator "companies selling online" is - if employment weighted - defined as "companies representing …% of employees sell online". The reason for using employment weighting is that there are very many more micro enterprises than non-micro enterprises. The unweighted figure would effectively represent just the smallest sizes of firm.
In the sector databases, figures are offered both as employment-weighted and as enterprise-weighted data. Enterprise weighted data should be read as "…% of enterprises", irrespectively of the number of employees working in these enterprises (defined as the legal unit).