Quality Guidelines for Frames in Social Statistics Version 1.51 ESSnet KOMUSO Quality in Multisource Statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/essnet-quality-multisource-statistics_en Framework Partnership Agreement No 07112.2015.003-2015.226 Specific Grant Agreement No 3 (SGA-3) No 07112.2018.007-2018.0444 Work Package 2 QUALITY GUIDELINES FOR FRAMES IN SOCIAL STATISTICS Version 1.51, 2019-09-30 Prepared by: Thomas Burg (Statistics Austria), Alexander Kowarik (Statistics Austria), Magdalena Six (Statistics Austria), Giovanna Brancato (Istat, Italy) and Danuté Krapavickaité (LS, Lithuania) Reviewers: Fabian Bach (ESTAT), Lionel Vigino (ESTAT), Li-Chun Zhang (SSB, Norway), Ton de Waal (CBS, The Netherlands), Angela McCourt (CSO, Ireland), Eva-Maria Asamer (Statistics Austria) and Christoph Waldner (Statistics Austria) ESSnet co-ordinator: Niels Ploug (DST, Denmark), email [email protected], telephone +45 3917 3951 1 Quality Guidelines for Frames in Social Statistics Version 1.51 Table of contents 1 Purpose and Objectives of the Document ................................................................................................................ 3 2 Frames in Official Statistics ....................................................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Definition of a Frame ........................................................................................................................................ 5 2.2 Frames in Social Statistics ................................................................................................................................. 8 2.3 Processes involving Frames .............................................................................................................................. 9 3 Constructing and Maintaining Frames in Social Statistics ...................................................................................... 12 3.1 Sources for Constructing Frames .................................................................................................................... 12 3.2 Organization, support, planning and coordination ......................................................................................... 15 3.3 Methods for Constructing Frames .................................................................................................................. 19 3.4 Possible outputs when constructing frames in social statistics ...................................................................... 23 3.5 Updating Frames in social statistics ................................................................................................................ 25 4 Use of frames in social statistics ............................................................................................................................. 29 4.1 Sampling .......................................................................................................................................................... 29 4.1.1 Sampling Frames ..................................................................................................................................... 29 4.1.2 Contact variables ..................................................................................................................................... 34 4.2 Frames as input for processing ....................................................................................................................... 36 4.2.1 Frames supporting editing and imputation ............................................................................................ 36 4.2.2 Frames supporting weighting and calibration ........................................................................................ 38 4.3 Frames as input for statistical outputs ........................................................................................................... 40 4.3.1 Relevance ................................................................................................................................................ 40 4.3.2 Accuracy .................................................................................................................................................. 42 4.3.3 Timeliness and Punctuality ..................................................................................................................... 44 4.3.4 Accessibility and Clarity ........................................................................................................................... 46 4.3.5 Comparability .......................................................................................................................................... 48 4.3.6 Coherence ............................................................................................................................................... 50 5 Assessing and evaluation the quality of frames in social statistics ......................................................................... 53 5.1 Methods to assess the quality of a frame ....................................................................................................... 53 5.1.1 Quality assessment ................................................................................................................................. 53 5.1.2 Quality indicators .................................................................................................................................... 57 5.2 Quality and metadata management, quality improvement and quality reporting ........................................ 62 Annex I: Frame quality assessment: items, approaches and methods ........................................................................... 65 Annex II: References ....................................................................................................................................................... 69 Annex III: Requirements for frame contents .................................................................................................................. 71 Annex IV: Standardized questionnaire for metadata on frames data which are used by the social and population statistics .......................................................................................................................................................................... 73 Annex V: Glossary ........................................................................................................................................................... 90 2 Quality Guidelines for Frames in Social Statistics Version 1.51 1 Purpose and objectives of the document This document is an ESSnet KOMUSO deliverable1 under ESS.VIP Vision 2020.ADMIN, which is a project portfolio for achieving the goals of the European Statistical System (ESS) Vision 20202. Since the provision of guidelines is one of the key objectives set out in the ESS Vision 2020.ADMIN business case3, the main goal of this document is to provide guidelines for all processes relevant for frames in social statistics. In official statistics, the description of social phenomena by statistical figures is one of the main functions of national statistical systems and frames are essential to this function. In addition to this general objective, in order to help implement ESS Vision 2020, this document pursues three more specific objectives. The first specific objective concerns compliance with the Code of Practice. In the last decade of the last century, the question of quality in the production of official statistics was approached in a systematic way. By defining quality on a multidimensional basis and laying down quality dimensions in the EU Statistics Regulation (No 223/09), the concept for a framework, which was later enhanced by formulating and adopting the European Code of Practice (CoP) for official statistics, was established. Principle 4 of the CoP 'Commitment to Quality' – and specifically indicator 4.1 – states that 'Quality policy is defined and made available to the public. An organisational structure and tools are in place to deal with quality'. The Quality Assurance Framework (QAF) calls for the development of quality guidelines for relevant steps in the statistical process as one of the key methods for providing evidence of compliance with principle 4. This specific element, together with the stipulation of indicator 7.3 (' The registers and frames used for European Statistics are regularly evaluated and adjusted if necessary in order to ensure high quality.'), shows that the CoP demands the continuous development and use of good (or, if possible, best) practices for frames for population statistics, which must be expressed in the form of concrete guidelines. Accordingly, one of the main objectives of this document is to deliver a building block for safeguarding compliance with the Code of Practice in terms of the construction, use and assessment of frames in social statistics. A second specific objective of the guidelines is to provide producers of social statistics with systematic guidance for all process steps relevant for frames in social statistics. The procedures of National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) working with frames in social statistics seem to be more heterogeneous than the procedures for economic statistics, where the development and maintenance of the frame (which in most cases is equivalent to the business registers) were in some way generic for NSIs all over the world.