Multi-source Statistics: Basic Situations and Methods
In this paper we structure the world of multi-source statistics and its problems and provide some guidance to suitable methods for these problems.
National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) all over the world are moving from single-source statistics to multi-source statistics. With the use of multiple data sources more detailed statistics can be produced. By utilizing a combination of already available data sources NSIs can also produce more timely statistics, save data collection and processing costs, and reduce response burden.
However, multi-source statistics come with new problems that need to be overcome before the resulting output quality is sufficiently high and before those statistics can be produced efficiently. What complicates the production of multi-source statistics is that data sources can be combined in many different ways. In this paper we structure the world of multi-source statistics and its problems and provide some guidance to suitable methods for these problems.
