NIS Survey

Responses from a representative population survey on the use and prevalence of body-worn sources of non-ionising radiation (NIS), conducted by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH).

Dataset description

The survey was conducted under Module 4 of the National Monitoring Programme for Non-Ionising Radiation (NIS monitoring) jointly by the FOEN and the FOPH. The aim of this sub-project is to record the population's exposure to so-called body-worn sources of non-ionising radiation and to inform the population about it. Such sources include mobile phones, smartwatches, Bluetooth headphones, induction hobs and VR headsets, among others.

As a rule, these devices do not affect the whole body equally, but primarily those parts of the body located in the immediate vicinity of the device. The actual exposure of the body depends substantially on individual usage behaviour — for instance on how long and how close to the body a device is used. In order to estimate the overall exposure of the Swiss population as realistically as possible, information on the prevalence of these devices and on usage and wearing habits is therefore required.

Against this background, the FOPH and the FOEN commissioned a first representative survey in November 2024, in which around 1000 people aged 18 and over were asked about their use of body-worn electrical devices.

Data product

The data product comprises the responses from the first survey conducted jointly by the FOEN and the FOPH on the use and prevalence of body-worn NIS sources (that is, electrical devices), carried out in November 2024, in English. The dataset is provided in long format: each row corresponds to one respondent's answer to one survey item. An interview therefore spans several rows sharing the same interviewId. The variables itemId and responseId describe which survey item the respective answer refers to.

Data structure

Property	Value
Data model	Long format
Unit of observation	One person's answer to one survey item
Primary key	interviewId (+ itemId) + responseId. The itemId forms the leading part of the responseId.
Language of the data	English. German, French and Italian will follow at a later stage.
Language of the documentation	German
Missing values	"don't know / no answer" or empty, depending on the variable
Weighting	interviewWeight

Variable index

Field	Type	Permitted values	Example	Description
interviewId	Int	positive integer	359	Unique identifier of the interview. All responses from the same interview carry the same identifier. The identifier is randomly generated and holds no personal reference; it serves to group all responses belonging to one interview.
interviewYearMonth	AWSDateTime	YYYY-MM-01THH:MM:SSZ	2024-11-01T00:00:00Z	Month in which the interview was conducted. The month is stored as a date using the first day of the month. The temporal resolution is one month.
interviewDurationGroup	String	see value list	300-359, 540-599	Grouped duration of the interview in seconds. For data-protection and interpretation reasons the interview duration is reported in classes.
interviewWeight	Float	positive decimal number	0.89, 1.65	Weighting factor of the interview for extrapolation to the target population (here: the Swiss population). To be used for representative statistical analyses.
itemId	String	see the survey's variable index	USE4, PARA, SOCIO	Unique identifier of the surveyed variable. Serves as the unique key of the variable and allows the associated metadata to be matched.
itemText	String	see the survey's variable index	You will now see a list of devices. Please indicate whether you use each device several times a day | daily | weekly | monthly | less often | never.	Readable label of the surveyed variable. It corresponds to the question or variable designation as presented to the interviewees and eases interpretation of the data.
responseId	String	see the survey's response index	USE1_mobile_phone, USE6_on_desk	Unique identifier of the selected response category within a variable. Serves as the unique key of the response category and allows the associated metadata to be matched.
responseText	String	see the survey's response index	Induction hob, Video telephony, don't know / no answer	Readable label of the selected response category. Eases interpretation of the data and is suited to analyses and visualisations.
responseValue	String	depends on responseValueType	yes, weekly, true, low	Standardised response value, which should be used for statistical analyses. The responses were standardised and, for data-protection reasons, partly grouped.
responseValueType	String	categorical, integer, double, boolean, datetime	categorical	Data type of the standardised response value responseValue. Defines how responseValue is to be interpreted and processed further.

Querying the data

Result order and pagination

Results are returned in no particular order and a single query is capped at 10 000 rows. Queries that exceed the cap are rejected rather than truncated. Larger datasets are retrieved by partitioning into smaller filter windows (typically a date range) and iterating. See Pagination for details.

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Filterable fields: interviewId, interviewYearMonth, itemId and responseId.

Download data

The survey responses are available as a prepared CSV file for direct download. For targeted, filtered extracts, use the GraphQL API.

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Notes

• Each row represents a single response to a single survey item; the responses belonging to one interview share the same interviewId.
• interviewWeight is to be used for representative analyses when aggregating across interviews.
• Depending on the variable, missing values are reported as "don't know / no answer" or left empty.
• Response texts and question wordings are currently available in English only.
• Timestamps are ISO-8601 in UTC (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ).

Contact

Questions about the content of this dataset can be addressed to the FOEN — see Contact.