Sharing best practices for the redesign of three business surveys

Sharing best practices for the redesign of three business surveys Charles Tardif, Business Survey Methods Division,Statistics Canada presented at the ICES-III, session 75 June 21st, 2007 1

Alternative title Can we design a monthly Unified Enterprise Survey? 2

Outline • What are monthly business surveys? – a simplified view • Common objectives of monthly business surveys • Statistics Canada (STC) monthly business surveys: • Monthly Survey of Manufacturers (MSM) • Monthly Survey of the Food Services and Drinking Places (MFS) • Monthly Wholesale and Retail Trade Survey (MWRTS) 3

Outline (cont’d) • Commonalities between the surveys • Comparing survey elements • Summary – A monthly unified enterprise survey? • Conclusion 4

What are monthly business surveys? – a simplified view • Production of monthly estimates mainly on financial information (sales, revenues, expenses, etc): • By geographic level • By industrial level, classified by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) • With a targetted quality, expressed in terms of Coefficients of Variation (CV). 5

Common objectives of monthly business surveys • Measure trends and levels for key financial variables • Establish best possible survey design to meet the surveys’ objectives • Meet the 6 elements of the STC Quality Framework: • Relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, interpretability, coherence • Maximise use of administrative data, mainly tax data, to reduce response burden 6

STC monthly business surveys 7

STC monthly business surveys (cont’d) 8

Commonalities between the surveys • All surveys: • share common objectives • undertook or completed a redesign or a restratification in the last 2 years • are facing pressure to make a more extensive use of Tax data • have skewed populations • have an annual counterpart, all integrated in the Unified Enterprise Survey (UES) • are managed by different subject matter divisions, although centralized methodological support. 9

Commonalities between the surveys • One monthly unified survey? • We’ll see what has been done so far to harmonize the different surveys. 10

Comparing survey elements 11

Comparing survey elements • Stratification – Now: • Differences between surveys, but all: • are using the Lavallée-Hidiroglou algorithm (efficient with skewed population) to stratify their population with the following characteristics: • 1 Take-all / must-take stratum by prov/NAICS • 1 or a few take-some strata by prov/NAICS • Minimum sample size per stratum • Capped design weight • Oversampling for out-of-scopes, deaths and non-response 13

Comparing survey elements • Use of GST - Now: • All surveys are making use of GST data, although in a different way: • MSM and MWRTS: • Micro approach, with selected units replaced by GST data through modeling. Units have a design weight > 1. • Use of GST data varies by NAICS for MSM • Standard stratification design explained in the previous slide is used 14

Comparing survey elements GST micro approach, selected units Take-alls Take- somes 1 S1 S2 Take- somes 2 Take-nones 15

Comparing survey elements • Use of GST - Now: • All surveys are making use of GST data, although in a different way: • MFS: • Micro approach, where a sample of units known as simples are selected to model the value of all the other simple units. All units have a weight of 1. • Independent stratification design for these simple units. • Applied for selected combinations of provinces and NAICS. 16

Comparing survey elements GST micro approach, all units modelled Take-alls Simples Complex units Take-nones 17

Summary - A monthly unified enterprise survey? • Advantages • Taking advantage of the best practices of each survey to integrate all monthly surveys • Easier to ensure coherence between the monthly surveys – and their annual counterpart, for comparison purposes • Annual surveys are already integrated 21

Summary - A monthly unified enterprise survey? • Advantages (cont’d) • Would facilitate the implementation of changes to the surveys (no need for a guinea pig): • For example, introduction of the GST was done at different times for the 3 surveys • Implementation of better measures of variability could be done more efficiently: • Integrating more components of variability • Variance of the differences between the estimates 22

Summary - A monthly unified enterprise survey? • Issues - Methodological • As seen, there are conceptual differences between the surveys: • Different data elements collected • Level at which the information is collected is different • Use of administrative data is different • Although these differences could be factored in the sample design 23

Summary - A monthly unified enterprise survey? • Issues - Operational • Currently managed by three different subject matter divisions, but centralized methodological support • Impact on the field work 24

Conclusion • Past: • Used to be important differences between the monthly surveys • Present: • Important steps have been made to share best practices between the monthly surveys to harmonize them • Future: • Should we go one step further and integrate them in a Monthly Unified Enterprise Survey? 25

For more information, please contact • Pour plus d’information, veuillez svp contacter Charles.Tardif@statcan.ca 26

Sharing best practices for the redesign of three business surveys