The Bank of Japan said Monday it will review the corporate samples used in its quarterly "tankan" survey this spring to better reflect the nation's evolving industrial structure.
The new samples will include a greater number of online-related businesses, and the number of such samples will increase to 10,848 from 8,204, it said.
The BOJ will start using the new samples beginning in the survey to be conducted in March. The results will be announced April 1.
Under the new framework, sample companies will be categorized based on the size of their capital instead of how many people they employ, the central bank said.
If new samples were used in the survey that was conducted in December, for example, it would have shown an improvement of corporate sentiment to minus 11 points, compared with the minus 15 that was announced.
The index represents the percentage of companies reporting business conditions are good minus those reporting business conditions are bad.