The Future of Federal Household Surveys Summary of a Workshop (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Federal Household Survey System at a Crossroads
2 The Federal Household Survey System at a Crossroads
Pages 5-22
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From page 5... ...
model for survey integration; the case of the Netherlands, which relies less on household surveys and more on official population registers; and Canada's use of a multipronged approach to improve efficiencies, including establishing a corporate business architecture and developing a strategy of survey integra tion. The international examples of survey data collection served to open up a broader discussion about data collection approaches to consider.
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Finally, increasing concerns about privacy and confidentiality have exacted a toll on survey participation. Coverage patterns in many federal household surveys are evidence that survey frames are not always adequate to reach a representative sample of the population.
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In addition to these strategies, Abraham laid out possible actions that agencies could take to meet the challenges facing federal household surveys. Although the last two years have seen an increase in funding for some statistical agencies, it is unlikely that increases will continue, particularly in the current political climate with calls for reduced government spending -- making it even more important to look for ways of increasing efficiencies.
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Clark explained that the focus of the presentation is on the original design of the IHS but includes a discussion of the challenges the United Kingdom has faced related to the design over the years. Responding to many of the same pressures that confront household surveys in the United States and as part of the U.K.'s survey modernization program, the ONS developed an Integrated Household Survey design.
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The integrated design increases the sample size for core variables by asking them on all the component surveys. The design of the IHS relies on the use of modules formed from four existing continuous household surveys: the LFS (including some regional supplementary surveys)
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Instead, field operations had to fall back on existing survey systems. Given that data users do not like to see variables dropped, another problem was that the survey core ended up being too long to be practically administered in the field.
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He also asked whether the United Kingdom has been experiencing challenges related to household survey data collections similar to those in the United States and whether the ONS expects the harmonization to address these problems. Clark responded that funding became available for infrastructure development, which represented an incentive to embark on this project.
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has prepared reports on the federal household survey network in the past, its perceptions were that the surveys are duplicative and a heavy burden on respondents. The GAO wanted to know why surveys are not combined together in a framework similar to the IHS, but it appears that the IHS has grown out of different considerations.
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Citro made the point that great design ideas alone will not solve the current problems of the federal household surveys. The success of integration depends at least as much on systems, procedures, and cost accounting as it does on design ideas.
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Responding to increasing calls for more comprehensive, higher quality data, Statistics Netherlands created the Social Statistical Database (SSD) , an amalgam of the population register, the LFS, the Survey on Unemployment and Earnings, and other administrative sources.
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, falling response rates, coverage problems with RDD and telephone surveys, and the challenges of surveying difficult-to-reach populations. In response to the demand for data, Tambay said, Statistics Canada has developed several strategies grouped under the term "New Household Survey Strategy," including survey integration, spreading interviewer and response burden, development of a master sample, creation of a population frame, and
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; pool 2 years' sample for small health regions Survey of Household 20,000/year LFS area frame Spending General Social Survey 25,000/year Random digit dialing Travel Survey of 110,000/year LFS "live" supplement Residents of Canada Canadian Tobacco Use 50,000 households/year Random digit dialing Monitoring Survey 20,000 persons/year NOTE: CAPI = computer-assisted personal interviewing, CATI = computer-assisted telephone interviewing, LFS = Labour Force Survey. SOURCE: Workshop presentation by Jean-Louis Tambay.
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To aid in cluster listing operations, Statistics Canada provides its interviewers with dwelling lists from the Address Register (AR) , which is similar to the U.S Census Bureau's Master Address File.
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Several proposals for social surveys have come out of the new program, including creating a household survey frame function and developing a social survey processing environment that is common to multiple surveys as well as increasing the use of electronic data reporting. The LFS is ideal for testing electronic data reporting because survey respondents have the option of pro viding an email address in their first month in the sample or responding for the following five months of the survey via an Internet address provided by Statistics Canada.
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Each of the countries represented at the workshop is addressing these issues differently. The United Kingdom has standardized and integrated its major household surveys.
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This lowers survey costs, but there are issues inherent in gathering data this way. Canada has addressed some of its challenges through the use of master sample frames and samples, integrated listing activities, and household survey sample coordi nation.
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The department was also ordered to destroy the file, because although the existence of the file was always public, information about how the data were being used was found to be not transparent enough. Robert Kominski (Census Bureau)
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Statistics Netherlands defines survey populations to be the population in the register, thus that sampling frame completely fits the population. There is also a database for information to do weighting adjustments.
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