European Health Interview Survey wave 4 : methodological manual : 2024 edition

Public health policies need reliable data on health status, health care use and health determinants from population surveys for all Member States. The European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) is the instrument to collect such information. The first wave of EHIS level was launched under a gentlemen's agreement and implemented in 17 EU Member States between 2006 and 2009. The second wave of EHIS was conducted in all EU Member States, Iceland, Norway and Turkey between 2013 and 2015 under Regulation 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work, complemented by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 141/2013 as regards statistics based on the European Health Interview Survey. More details for EHIS wave 2 were provided in the methodological manual to achieve a high level of comparability of the survey results across countries. The third wave of EHIS was also conducted under the Framework regulation above, the reference year being 2019. All Member States participated in the EHIS wave 3 in accordance with the Commission Regulation (EU) No. 2018/255, as well as Iceland, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Albania. A derogation regarding the data collection period was granted for some countries: the data collection period was 2018 for Belgium, 2018-2020 for Austria and Germany, and 2019-2020 for Malta. The work for EHIS wave 4 was launched in Eurostat in 2022 when a first draft of the new legal acts were discussed by a dedicated task force. Over the 2022-2023 period, detailed discussions and consultations were held by different European Statistical System (ESS) bodies including the Task Force EHIS (TF EHIS), the Public Health Working Group (PH WG), and the Group of the Directors of Social Statistics of the National Statistical Institutes. The EHIS wave 4 Implementing regulation was endorsed by the European Statistical System Committee at its meeting in October 2023 and finally adopted by the European Commission on 17 November 2023.