New tools to improve statistical – developments and projects

- an ESS priority and reality

Louise Corselli-Nordblad, Britta Gauckler Eurostat

Paper prepared for the 16th Conference of IAOS OECD Headquarters, Paris, France, 19-21 September 2018

Session 3 E, Thursday, 20/09, 10h30: Improving statistical literacy

Louise Corselli-Nordblad [email protected] European Commission-Eurostat

Britta Gauckler [email protected] European Commission-Eurostat

New tools to improve statistical literacy – developments and projects

Prepared for the 16th Conference of the International Association of Official Statisticians (IAOS) OECD Headquarters, Paris, France, 19-21 September 2018

Note: This Paper should not be reported as representing the views of Eurostat. The views expressed are those of the authors.

ABSTRACT

The need for statistical organisations to invest in statistical literacy is commonly agreed and reinforced by the current concerns around "fake news". Yet, there are numerous open questions around how and what the official community should best invest in this endeavour. An overarching strategy for the European Statistical System (ESS) is missing and one can question if in a fast-paced world a long-term strategy is useful to tackle the issues. As Wild puts it, the should invest in ways to "…deliver lasting benefits in a fast changing world."1 Under the ESS Vision 2020 project Digital communication, User analytics and Innovative products (DIGICOM) the ESS has started to invest in this area. Initiatives range from building new partnerships with the educational system, piloting innovative tools, such as gamification and competitions, to digital tools which explain statistics in a clear and easy way. This paper will describe the key target groups and the projects in this area.

Keywords: statistical literacy; statistical education and promotion; statistical communication

1 Wild, Chris: Statistical literacy as the earth moves. Statistics Education Research Journal, May 2017, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p31-37. 7p.

1. INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION

In an era of fake news, it is increasingly important for citizens to understand figures presented in newspapers, on the internet and elsewhere. This importance is commonly emphasised, however, concrete projects on how to better understand figures and their origin, in other words statistical literacy, are not always available and the specific role that statistical offices should play in this field is not yet established. In this paper, recent and joint efforts on statistical literacy within the European Statistical System (ESS) and in Eurostat are described. The paper begins with a short introduction to define the term and the target groups that the products and projects aim at.

There is not always unity when it comes to a definition of statistical literacy. Additionally, the fact that “…what it means to be statistically literate is also changing”2 adds to the difficulty of a uniform definition of statistical literacy for official statistics. However, a general definition for a changing society could be formulated as:

Statistical literacy is the ability to understand statistics and to be able to draw conclusions from them. Statistical literacy products may simultaneously use texts, numbers and visualisations to communicate messages in an easy and understandable way.

For the presented projects the identified target groups are:  Students with some knowledge of statistics,  Pupils and teachers in upper secondary education,  Anyone else with little or no knowledge about statistics.

2. LITERACY PROJECTS IN THE ESS

The European Statistical System systematically invests in the area of statistical literacy under the ESS Vision 2020 project Digital communication, User analytics and Innovative products (DIGICOM) running from 2016 to 2019. DIGICOM aims to modernise the communication and dissemination of European statistics. This is achieved by exploring and developing innovative dissemination products and services based on experiences within the ESS and concrete needs of European statistics users. DIGICOM consists of four parallel work packages dealing with (1) user analysis, (2) innovative and sharable products and tools, (3) open data dissemination and (4) communication and promotion. Projects in the area of statistical literacy are included in the last work package on communication and promotion.

As a first step, experts from several National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) have developed an inventory that describes existing literacy practices in the ESS. This inventory was shared among all ESS members to provide inspiration and facilitate future collaboration and sharing in this area.

2 Wild, Chris: Statistical literacy as the earth moves. Statistics Education Research Journal, May 2017, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p31-37. 7p.

Through this, numerous important statistical literacy products and activities for official statistics in the ESS could be identified. Two priority areas were selected which are described below in more detail:

 The engagement with schools and the educational sector, and  The development of e-learning tool(s) and games.

The DIGICOM work package experts discussed the best way to engage with schools and the educational system on how to find a project which is fun and playful in order for pupils and teachers to join. It was concluded that a competition with suitable incentives would be a good practice to engage with young people. This would allow the participating national offices to deepen their relations with schools or to gain access to the educational sector. Some national statistical offices in the Member States already have close ties with the national educational system, while other offices do not.

As a result, the 1st European statistical competition (ESC) was implemented. The project follows best practices from previous national statistical competitions of INE Spain and other statistical institutes. The preparation work for the ESC was started in 2017 and was launched at the beginning of 2018 in 11 participating countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain). It was held in two phases for two age categories (14-16 years old and 16-18 years old).

The first phase was a national competition, carried out in collaboration with partnering schools and teachers. It comprised an online test about basic knowledge of statistical concepts and also an in-depth assignment, generally an analysis of a dataset where students had to show their ability to find information on national and European websites and publications. Depending on the age category, the difficulty of the assignment was adjusted.

In the second, European, phase of the competition, the winning teams were invited to reflect upon the importance of official statistics with a more creative approach. The top 180 students (in 63 teams) qualified to represent their countries in the final European round produced a short video on why official statistics matter. To evaluate the videos, a high-level jury of acclaimed experts within communication, , fact-checking and data visualisation was set up, most of them working outside statistical organisations. The winners of the ESC, Toivasnik and Pakila9D, were announced during an award ceremony at the Q2018 conference on official statistics and were shown to a wide audience.3

The joint effort of this competition was an overall success and its objectives have been fully achieved. Already the number of students and teacher reached via this project shows its significance: over 11 000 students aged 14-18 and 1 000 teachers took part in the competition. In addition, the ESC is a good way to engage with students and teachers in order to gain more insight about the statistical knowledge of this age group and to better understand teachers' needs. Finally, the videos produced provide a fresh view on official statistics and have themselves the potential to serve as vehicles for statistical literacy. Given its success, Eurostat and the European Statistical System decided to build upon it and the ESC 2019 is already being planned, with even more participating NSIs.

3 The top five for each age category have been published on the competition's website. 5

In the area of the development of e-learning tools there are already numerous products from different sources online, however few are from official, trusted sources. At ESS level this was found as another priority area, which could also serve the educational sector at university level, as professors and academics mainly produce their own e-learning tools and there is no ‘official’ material available for them to use.

Some NSIs have already produced good practices and modern e-learning products. Among them, the e- learning modules of Destatis (the Federal Statistical Office of Germany) were identified to be easily deployed also within other countries. Thus, modules dealing with basic statistical concepts like means and averages, the development of indicators, data collection methods, data protection, quality of statistical processes and products, main errors in dealing with statistics, etc. are currently being translated and adjusted to address also users at a European level. The first modules are expected to be ready in the autumn 2018.

Gamification products is another area that the DIGICOM project has on its agenda. The objective is to make use of this playful approach to motivate and attract students in an interactive way. Over the last two years several new and innovative products such as apps and digital games in this area are being produced which will become available in the near future.4

3. PROJECTS AT EUROSTAT TO INCREASE STATISTICAL LITERACY

In order to reply to users needs where there is a demand for shorter texts, sharability and interactivity, Eurostat has recently produced several dissemination and visualisation tools. These tools do not only explain statistics in an easy language, they also contain sharable tools which visualise statistics in a clear and simple way. All in order to attract those not so familiar with statistics and to increase statistical literacy.

Examples of such tools are digital publications which combine short texts explaining main findings with interactive tools, visualisations, animations, illustrations etc. This combination gives a non-specialist reader the opportunity to get a clear and simple overview of a vast or complicated subject and at the same time be able to chose the data he/she is interested in.

So far, four digital publications have been produced: the first one "Shedding light on energy in the EU" was released in September 2016 and has been updated with fresh data twice since. The second one "Digital economy & society in the EU" was released in June 2017 and has been updated once. These two digital publications both refer to Commission priorities, the Energy union and the Digital single market with the aim of making these priorities easier for the public to understand through statistics.

The third digital publication "The life of women and men in Europe" was released in October 2017 in 24 languages. This project was conducted within the DIGICOM project, where the participating NSIs together produced the content of the publication as well as the translations. All 24 languages were published on the same day (in connection with the European Statistics Day) and are available on the Eurostat website as well as on the corresponding national websites. Updated versions will be

4 Luhmann, Sybille, et.al.: A European effort to explore games and the gamification of official statistics, forthcoming paper for the CESS 2018 conference, https://coms.events/cess2018/data/x_abstracts/x_abstract_35.pdf 6 published for the next European Statistics Day in October 2018. A fourth digital publication "The European economy since the start of the millennium" was released in June 2018, and is currently in the process of being translated into a number of languages. The digital publications and their visualisation tool generated quite some attention in the media, with some tools being embedded into newspapers' websites and thus generating a very large amount of views.

Another example is Statistics 4 beginners, which is a part of Statistics Explained, a Eurostat website containing around 900 articles explaining statistical indicators through story-telling. While Statistics Explained is aimed at intermediate users with a certain knowledge about statistics and economy, Statistics 4 Beginners is aimed at those with a basic or no knowledge of statistics, and/or at pupils/teachers in upper secondary school. This project, which started within the framework of the work package dealing with statistical literacy of DIGICOM, is developed in collaboration with teachers. It consists of articles describing different statistical subjects and concepts in a very easy way through simple texts, visualisations and animations.

Currently the following subjects are included in Statistics 4 beginners: - Population - GDP - Inflation - Government finance statistics - Eleven statistical concepts

Most of the subjects are available in English, French, German, Bulgarian, Greek, Dutch and Portuguese. These translations have partly been made within the framework of DIGICOM. Further concepts and translations will be developed in the future.

Addressing a different audience, Eurostat contributed to a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on “EU resources for regions and cities” in partnership with the Committee of the Regions and several other EU institutions in early 2018, reaching 12 000 participants. This MOOC is particularly targeted at officials of regional and local administrations involved in EU affairs, but also at students, teachers, local journalists and citizens interested in the EU. The course included three pedagogical videos as well as quizzes. In the videos, colleagues from Eurostat explain, for instance, which regional statistics are available, how they are produced and what is the NUTS classification. In summary, the course stimulated discussions and increased knowledge about official statistics, and given its large reach of 12 000 participants, it proved to be a success.

Eurostat has also developed several stand-alone visualisation tools which are sharable within DIGICOM. Examples of such visualisations are: "Young Europeans" – aimed at young people and gives them the possibility to be compared with other young people in their country. It consists of quiz- like questions about four different themes: "me and my family", "me and my work", "me and my free time" and "me and the internet". "You in the EU" has the same basis as "Young Europeans", but not targeting a specific age group. It consists of three different themes: "me and my life", "me and my living condition" and "me and my work". Another example of an interactive tool is "Air traffic" which visualises air passenger transport. By selecting different airports in Europe, the top five routes in

7 terms of number of passengers and flights are displayed allowing the user to get a clear and simple overview of air transport in Europe.

These are only a few examples, for further examples please see the tools page on the Eurostat web site.

3. FUTURE

This paper provides evidence that modern and innovative statistical literacy products and projects can be developed successfully in a relatively short time frame. This success is strongly linked to the fact that synergies and strong partnerships have been established and used within the European Statistical System. In the abstract, the question was raised whether there is a strong need to have a statistical literacy strategy. Due to the fact that communication tools needed for statistical literacy are part of a fast changing world, the conclusion is that a long-term strategy is not necessarily useful. What is important is to strengthen partnerships, to learn from each other and to share tools.

However, what is needed when designing statistical literacy projects are both qualitative and quantitative measurements of the (long-term) impact of the activities and tools in terms of number of views, usage in schools, feedback, etc. With such measurements, the projects and tools could be evaluated in a better way and descisions could be taken on whether they should be continued or not.

There are many common challenges in the field of statistical literacy, and projects like the ones presented in this paper are ideal for joint development and sharing. The ESS experience shows that sharing tools and experiences is not used as much as it could be. One reason could be linguistic, legal or technical issues, things that need to be solved at an early stage in the sharing process. However, given the large impact and leverage when sharing, this path of cooperation should continue in the future.

8