Continuous

Data is collected by CAPI (computer-assisted data collection), with the visit of an interviewer for the first and last waves for each dwelling, and by CATI (telephone) for other intermediate waves.
If a person cannot respond (or does not want to), another person from the same household can answer in their  place.
The survey is conducted continuously, every week of the year.The same dwelling is surveyed six times (the different waves of surveys are spaced with intervals of exactly three months).Survey results are published quarterly or annually.

Individual

From 2011, in metropolitan France, the sample consists of dwellings from the housing tax register.
The sample is "areal": it is not derived directly from a drawing of dwellings, but from a drawing of groups of twenty contiguous dwellings.
These groups or "clusters" have been automatically constructed using a bottom-up logic : clusters are defined among all dwellings in France, then sets of 6 clusters are put together to form sectors. Sampled sectors are then drawn in each region from this database in a balanced way  and a serial number is randomly assigned for the clusters from each sector. A cluster is surveyed for six consecutive quarters and then is replaced in the sample by the next cluster of the same sector (the one with immediately-higher order number).

The sampling was done using a stratification by region and degree of urbanization. Henceforth, each quarter, approximately 73 000 dwellings are identified as main homes and interviewed. Also, each quarter, a sixth of them are replaced.

Ultimately, there are survey files for about 108,000 people aged 15 or over who are respondents every quarter, in 58,000 households.

The overseas sample is made up of dwellings drawn in census annual survey files; as in metropolitan France, these units are grouped in clusters, a cluster being surveyed for six consecutive quarters and then replaced by a new cluster located in the same sector.

The complementary module is asked to the outgoing clusters in metropolitan France.