The Business Register – Estimation Methods

Most variables are easy to understand because they take only one value for each object. The age of a person is an example of a single‐valued variable. This chapter discusses a more complex kind of variables, multi‐valued variables and the methodological problems related to this category. A multi‐valued variable can accept several values for certain objects, and the number of values differs among the objects. The variable occupation is created in the Occupation Register, which is a register of persons. This variable is a multi‐valued variable, as many people have more than one job and can therefore have several occupations. The variable industry is created in the Business Register; it is a multi‐valued variable of great importance. The chapter describes a series of different estimation problems with multi‐valued variables, and suggestions are made for solutions to these problems.