Architectural services, price index, Q2 2007

National level

Quarterly. The statistics are published about 6 weeks after the end of the quarter

Data is transmitted quarterly to Eurostat.

Microdata are stored as text files on UNIX

The purpose of the index is to measure the price development for architectural services. Further the index will be used to deflate the National accounts. The statistics comply the short term statistics regulation.

The statistics has been published since 2001 with figures from 1st quarter 1998.

The index is used to analyse and survey the development in prices and costs. It is also used in the national accounts at Statistics Norway. The industry itself and the users of the services provided by the industry are other important users.

The index is used in national accounts, together with the turnover index for architectural services. It can be interesting to compare the price index to other statistics that covers building- and construction services.

The Statistics Act, § 2-1, 2-2 and 2-3

Regulation (EC) No 1158/2005 of the European Parliament and the Council of July 6 2005 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 1165/98 concerning short-term statistics.

The population is selected from Statistic Norway's business register. The population contains only active establishments. The statistical unit is establishment.

Information on the respondents' number of employees is retrieved from Statistic Norway's Business Register. The prices are collected through a quarterly survey.

The sample consists of all establishments in the population, with 10 or more employees.

The survey is based on a quarterly postal questionnaire combined with information from the Business register. The questionnaire is posted by the end of each quarter with a two weeks deadline. It is possible to report data on the Internet.

The questionnaire is read optically and controlled and revised both automatically and manually. We control that the price per hour within each establishment have a reasonable variation from quarter to quarter.

The index is based on price per hour. Since the price vary by the level of the staff, an average price is estimated. The share of the participation by the different staff levels is used to calculate the total number of employees at different levels. This is in turn used to calculate the weights of each staff level. In addition the sample is stratified by the number of employees; one strata for establishments with 10-19 employees and one for those with 20 or more.

Indices for each of the 6 strata are calculated, and weighted into a total index.

Not relevant

The time series started in the 1st quarter of 1998. The sample was reduced by the 2nd quarter of 2008 to exclusively contain establishments with 10 employees or more. Calculations indicate that this reduction practically had no influence on the index development. The weights were also changed at the same time, as described in 3.6.