I would like to know when interviews are conducted in a given month. For instance if the calendar month of the interview is January, what is the exact date of the interview? Are all interviews conducted at set dates? If not is it possible to obtain the information about the exact date when the interview was conducted?
You cannot know the exact date of the interview; however, the reference week is generally the 7-day calendar week that includes the 12th of the month for all respondents. Interviews take place during the 7-day calendar week that includes the 19th of the month, immediately following the reference week. You can find more information on this page of CPS definitions.
Thank you for your answer!
Is it possible and where can I find the dates of the references (or interview) weeks in each month for 1975-2020? The link that you provided has dates of the references weeks for 2020 and I would need it for earlier years as well.
The reference week has been the week that includes the 12th since 1955 (see CPS Technical Paper 66). I am not aware of a resource that lists out the reference week by month and year over time. My best advice is to use the 2020 dates as a starting point to identify which federal holidays shift reference weeks if they do not include the 12th, then compare those holidays to the week containing the 12th over time.