The purpose of ULF is to monitor trends in the population in several welfare areas. From 1975 to 2005 the surveys were carried out mainly through face-toface interviews with a random sample annually of around 7,500 people, drawn from Sweden’s adult population aged 16–84.
2006 saw a major overhaul of the survey methodology. The first change was to the data gathering which, in 2006, was carried out using two different methods. Half of the sample was interviewed as before, based on a paper questionnaire, with almost 80 percent of the interviews face-to-face and just over 20 percent on the telephone. The other half of the sample was interviewed via computeraided telephone interviews, i.e. the interview questions were entered into a computer program and then read out on the phone by the interviewer, who also noted down the responses. Within this system, a number of the questions were adapted to the telephone situation.
The computer-aided telephone interviews had not yet been processed by the start of this new survey of cultural habits. This report has therefore only used the interviews from the face-to-face section of ULF 2006 to show how cultural habits have changed in the past few years. Unfortunately, this has caused increased statistical uncertainty in the estimates, since the interview material has only been half the size of a normal ULF year: 2,699 face-to-face interviews, 2,743 telephone interviews, 5,442 interviews in total (see table appendix C). The report’s table appendices A and B also show the estimated percentages based on the combined interview material gathered by visit and by phone, in order to allow comparisons between the methods. A detailed technical description of ULF can be found in appendix 1.