Deirdre Giesen & Barbara Berkenbosch

1. Managing perceived response burden: whyandhow Deirdre Giesen & Barbara Berkenbosch

2. Actual and perceived response burden • Actual response burden: time and/or money spent on complyingwithstatistical data requests • Perceived response burden: subjectiveevaluation of effort spent . E.g. • Didyoufinditquick or time consuming? • Didyoufindit easy or difficult? See also Dale & Haraldsen (2007) ‘Handbookfor monitoring andevaluating business survey response burdens’.

3. Outline • Findings BLUE-ETS project: demonstrating need for management of perceived burden • Example of “Perception of Burden” project at Statistics Netherlands

4. Acknowledgements BLUE-ETS work CBS Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres van Grinsven, Ger Snijkers et al. University of Ljubljana: Mojca Bavdaž, Irena Bolko et al. SSB Gustav Haraldsen, Øyvin Kleven, Tora Löfgren, Dag Gravem et al. SCB Boris Lorenc, Andreas Persson et al. SORS Rudi Seljak et al. University of Bergamo Sylvia Biffignandi Perception of Burden Project Barbara Berkenbosch, Daisy Debie, Lex Visser, Matthijs Jacobs ,Vronie de Haan, Jos van den Heuvel, Max Storms, Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres van Grinsven , Ger Snijkers et al.

5. BLUE-ETS research on burden and motivation

6. Slovenian experiment (Bavdaž & Bolko 2013)

7. Results BLUE-ETS case studies 1 Response burden related to response behaviour, e.g. more burden: lower and later response, more edits needed Perceived burden related to actual burden but also to perception of NSI and usefulness statistics

8. Results BLUE-ETS case studies 2 Experiments aiming at increasing motivation by better communication did not show many of the expected effects The two questionnaire studies showed that questionnaire redesign can reduce actual and perceived burden

9. Perception of Burden Project at SN • Ran from February 2012-August 2013 • Part of government policy to reduce burden caused by statistics • Main goal: further intensify and coordinate actions to reduce perceived burden (projects aimed at reducing actual burden ran in parallel) • Main goal: improve businesses’ and business organisations perceptions of response burden created by SN surveys

10. Assess needs by • Brainstorming workshop with representatives from various parts of bureau to 1) make inventory of current knowledge and initiatives and 2) prioritise actions needed to reduce business respondents’ irritiations about our survyes. • Additional research: telephone survey of SMEs in our samples, re-analyses of data customer satisfaction survey, analyses of sentiments regarding SN in social media

11. Actions taken • Improvement of letters • Show case approach: collaborationwithbusinessesand business organisations in redesign of survey • Reduction of helpdesk waitingtimes • Improvement of service call center • Improvement of website

12. Plans for the future • Use ‘show case approach’ for future redesign projects • Develop permanent monitoring of perceived response burden • Redesign questionnaire systems to imporve uniformity and user friendliness of our questionnaires and to enable the production of survey calendars • Further professionalize our complaint handling

13. Thank you for your attention… … and please have a look at all BLUE-ETS deliverables at www.blue-ets.eu!