Papers in deze reeks gaan over methoden, processen en informatietechnologische- en conceptuele onderwerpen die relevant zijn voor het werkterrein van het CBS. Ze beschrijven het resultaat van (toegepast) wetenschappelijk onderzoek dat CBS-ers, al dan niet samen met externen, hebben uitgevoerd. De reeks is niet bedoeld om CBS-cijfers te publiceren en de cijfers in de papers zijn dus niet als officiële CBS-uitkomsten aan te merken. De papers verschijnen onregelmatig. U kunt een gratis e-mail-abonnement op de reeks nemen.
21-11-2007
Labour productivity in business-services industry tends to lag behind the rest of the economy. This paper investigates whether labour productivity in European business services is affected by unexploited economies of scale. Moreover, it analyses whether the incidence of scale sub-optimality is related to characteristics of the market or to national regulation characteristics.
04-10-2007
A common problem faced by statistical offices is that data may be missing from collected data sets. The typical way to overcome this problem is to impute the missing data. In this paper we describe two algorithms for imputation of missing numerical data that take into account edit restrictions .
06-09-2007
This paper was presented at the QUEST (Questionnaire Evaluation Standards) Workshop, 21-23 October, ZUMA Mannheim, Germany. A Questionnaire lab test will be discussed concerning new questions on respondents’ education, occupation and company as well as automatic coding of the answers.
06-09-2007
This paper describes the evaluation and redesign of the Structural Business Survey questionnaire. We describe how and to what extent various evaluation methods contributed to our understanding of the main problems of the SBS questionnaires and how some of the evaluation results could be translated straightforwardly into solutions.
29-08-2007
In this paper, design-based analysis of embedded experiments is generalized to experimental designs in which clusters of sampling units are randomized over the different treatments. Furthermore, test statistics are derived to test hypotheses about ratios of two sample estimates. The methods are illustrated with a simulation study.
15-08-2007
From July to December 2005 a large scale follow up of nonrespondents in the Dutch Labour Force Survey (LFS) was conducted at Statistics Netherlands. In the study a sample of nonrespondents in the LFS was approached once more with strongly condensed CATI, web and paper questionnaires containing only the key questions of the LFS; the basic-question approach.
16-07-2007
In this study a dataset containing business survey variables and actual turnover realizations at the firm level is used to study what influences firms’ production expectations, what causes these to change and to test a number of hypothesis on expectation formation.
16-07-2007
This study is based on a dataset containing business survey variables and actual turnover realizations at the firm level, which are used to study the link between production expectations and turnover realizations. The aim was to formally test the connection at the micro-level between expectations and realizations, and to test whether expectations are connected more to single month/short-term turnover developments, or more to medium-term developments.
29-06-2007
Surveys are often kept unchanged as long as possible. When a change is proposed, it is important to minimise the impact so as to minimise the inconvenience for users. This paper sets out the steps in an orderly transition, provides practical guidance on how to minimise discontinuities, and reviews methods for dealing with discontinuities if they arise.
02-05-2007
From July to December 2005 a large scale follow up of nonrespondents in the Dutch Labour Force Survey (LFS) was conducted at Statistics Netherlands. In the study a sample of non-respondents in the LFS was approached once more by a small number of selected interviewers. The sample consisted of LFS households that refused, were not processed or were not contacted in the LFS of the months July–October.
17-04-2007
From July to October 2005 Statistics Netherlands conducted a pilot with basic questions for the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The basic questions consisted of all questions that are necessary to derive the employment status. A change of questionnaire and interview mode often results in measurement errors. This paper investigates the impact of mode effects in the LFS as a result of using the basic question approach.
28-03-2007
Many survey organisations focus on the response rate as being the quality indicator for the impact of non-response bias. However, it is not true in general that higher response rates imply smaller non-response bias. We introduce a number of concepts and indicators to assess the similarity between the response and sample of a survey. Such quality indicators may serve as counterparts to survey response rates and are primarily directed at evaluating the non-response composition.
26-02-2007
Het uitvoeren van een goed survey-onderzoek is ingewikkeld, kostbaar en tijdrovend. De ontwikkelingen in de informatietechnologie in de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw maakten het mogelijk om de computer te gaan gebruiken voor het verzamelen van gegevens. Met de razendsnelle opkomst van het internet heeft een nieuw type gegevensverzameling zijn intrede gedaan: Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI). Hierbij wordt de vragenlijst aangeboden aan de respondenten via het internet. Dit soort surveys wordt kortweg aangeduid als websurveys.
02-02-2007
At first sight, web surveys seem to be an interesting and attractive means of data collection. However, there is another side to this coin. Due to methodological problems, outcomes of web surveys may be severally biased. This paper describes some of the methodological problems, and explores the effect of various correction techniques.