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UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011 : Technical Report

This Technical Report provides in-depth detail on the methodology of the UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011.

Evidence Report : UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey – Technical Report (PDF, 1.5 Mb) 


Published December 2012

The UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011 is one of the largest business surveys in the world. Since the publication of the First Findings in December 2011, the UK Commission has investigated its results in detail to produce a suite of reports and data outputs reporting the findings of this unique survey. For the first time we have been able to report on vacancies, skills deficiencies, employment of young people, and employer business behaviour across the UK as a whole. In addition to the results at a UK level, we have also published reports looking at each UK nation.

The UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey 2011: Technical Report is a detailed explanation of how the 2011 survey was organised and carried out.

Prior to this survey, individual UK nations conducted independent skills surveys. Harmonising all four surveys needed substantial cross-governmental cooperation to overcome the methodological challenges involved. This report provides detail on the technical aspects of that process.

The report also details the questionnaire design process, sampling strategy, weighting of data, and coding of the core survey and its two follow-up waves. It also includes all three questionnaires in full with interviewer briefings; guidance on analysis; and confidence intervals and margins of error for key measures.

The report includes detail on:

  • The Core Survey
  • The Investment in Training follow-up
  • The Skills Equilibrium follow-up
  • The harmonisation process, which brought together the skills surveys of the four UK nations
  • Questionnaire design, including comparability with national predecessor surveys
  • Sampling strategy, by region and nation, sector, and size, including comparability with national predecessor surveys
  • Guidance for analysis
  • The process of calculation for modelled variables
  • Confidence intervals and margins of error for key measure

A range of data outputs are now available from the UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey.

Our England local data page has survey results in Excel format to download showing results for Local Education Authority and Local Enterprise Partnership. This page also has maps to download showing results by LEA and English region. (Maps for LEP are forthcoming.)

For more information on Excel tables available, or to enquire about access to full datasets, please contact [email protected]

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