Metadata: Households with internet connection
Source
Survey on ICT usage in households, Statbel, Eurostat, processed by Statistics Flanders
Definitions
The data on internet access is based on the following question from the survey:
“Does anyone in your household have internet access at home (via any device)?
- Yes
- No, but used to
- No, never had.”
Equivalent income is a measure of household income that takes into account differences in household size and composition, and is thus equated or made equivalent for all household sizes and compositions. Equivalent income is calculated by dividing total household income from all sources by the equivalent size, calculated using the modified OECD equivalence scale. This scale assigns a weight to all members of the household:
- 1.0 for the first adult;
- 0.5 for the second and each subsequent person aged 14 and above;
- 0.3 for each child under 14 years of age.
The equivalent size is the sum of the weights of all members of a given household.
Based on equivalent income, households can be ranked from low to high and divided into 5 quintiles or groups. The income classes used here to delineate the 5 quintiles were calculated by Statbel and based on the 2024 EU-SILC survey.
Remarks on quality
The survey on ICT and internet usage in households and by individuals is an annual survey coordinated by Eurostat in the Member States of the European Union. Statbel (the Belgian Statistical office, Statistics Belgium) is responsible for organising the survey in Belgium and for processing the Belgian figures.
In Belgium, the sample of the ICT survey among households and individuals is a sub-sample of the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The age range in LFS is 15 to 89. So by expanding the ICT survey in 2024 to include the 75- to 89-year-olds, the two samples pretty much coincide. After conducting the Labour Force Survey, the interviewer asks the person in the household who has had his/her birthday most recently and is at least 16 and younger than 90 whether he/she would like to complete the ICT survey autonomously.
Since 2009, 2 methods of data collection have been used: CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) via a web application and SAPQ (Self Administered Paper Questionnaire) via a paper form. Before 2009 the survey was conducted face to face by an interviewer. A reminder including a new questionnaire is sent if the household has not replied within 14 days.
The households eligible for the ICT survey are private households with at least one person in the age range of 16 to 89 years. Until the 2023 survey, it covered the age range from 16 to 74 years.
Before the reform of the LFS in 2017, the second quarter was sufficient to have enough households and the fieldwork was carried out from April until the end of August. From 2017 to 2020, these are the households that participated in the continuous labour force survey for the first or second quarter. Fieldwork ran from January to the end of August. In 2021, it was decided to include an additional quarter of the labour force survey to compensate for the lower response rate. In the fourth quarter of the previous year (2023) and in the first and second quarters of the year in question (2024), households participating in the labour force survey were invited to participate in the 2024 ICT survey.
After validation, the net sample contained 7,023 households in 2024. That is 54.2% of the households that participated in the Labour Force Survey 2024 and that were eligible for the ICT survey among households and individuals on the basis of the stated age criterion, and 35% of the initial gross sample of the Labour Force Survey 2024 with the exclusion of the households that did not satisfy the stated age criterion. The 7,023 households that made up the net sample are spread over the 3 regions as follows: 805 from the Brussels-Capital Region, 3,859 from the Flemish Region and 2,359 from the Walloon Region.