Meeting with friends and family (i75)

Definition: social contacts are defined by the result of the European Social Survey (ESS) and more particularly by the answer "at least once a week" to the question of how often "you meet friends, family or colleagues" for social reasons (i.e. neither for work nor for pure obligation, but because the survey respondents choose to meet friends, family or colleagues; this corresponds to the original European questionnaire in English and the questionnaire in Dutch. In the French-speaking questionnaire it is only mentioned "outside work"). This question was systematically asked in the ten biennial SSE surveys. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the survey for 2020 was postponed to 2021. The indicator is calculated by the FPB on the basis of data from ESS. Since these data are collected from surveys, a margin of uncertainty must be considered. The confidence intervals for these data are available on request.