The TIER manufacturing sector composite indicator released by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research are “qualitative” market confidence survey data. The survey approach was to inquire from respondents their views on the economic situation, whether it is “improving”, “unchanged” or “deteriorating”. Then, based on a certain statistical method, the data was combined into the TIER manufacturing sector composite indicator. In general, confidence survey data such as business climate index involves direct observations of original values or values after seasonal adjustment, without calculating annual growth rates. The reason for this is that the values of confidence survey data reflect the number of respondents that are optimistic or pessimistic about the economic situation in the sense that the economic implication is by far more direct and clear than it is after calculating annual growth rates. Based on the reason above, the TIER manufacturing sector composite indicator in the monitoring lights do not adopt annual growth rates in computations. Instead, the values released by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research are directly used for determining monitoring lights.