Data Abstract

The survey questionnaire consisted of three groups of the questions: (a) an employee¡¯s formal education history and its relevance to the current job; (b) on-the-job training provided by firms to employees and its relevance to the current job; and (c) adult education courses that employees attended on their own expenses outside their firms and their relevance to the current job. The survey was conducted in 1996, and information on training and adult education was obtained for a five-year period of 1991 to 1996.

Stratified random sampling was used to select the participating firms and employees. The stratified sample included (a) different service and production firms in both the manufacturing and service sector; (b) firms of eight types of ownership; (c) firms of different sizes, and (d) one or two major production lines in the firms, including all personnel, from managers, clerk, technical people to machine operators. For each economic sector, three large firms (defined as firms with over 800 employees), two medium-size firms (with between 301 to 800 employees) and one small firm (fewer than 300 employees) were to be sampled in each of the eight types of firm ownership , totaling 96 firms. It is to be noted that the entire production-line sampling strategy has the advantage of showing the actual personnel structure in these firms. The information on the education and training of the personnel reflects the firms¡¯ decisions regarding the formal education qualification of the workers that they hire and their investment in worker training.