Targetted double control of burden in multiple surveys

Description: Sample coordination methods aim to increase (in positive coordination) or decrease (in negative coordination) the size of the overlap between samples. The samples considered can be from different occasions of a repeated survey and/or from different surveys covering a common population. Negative coordination is used to control the response burden in a given period, because some units do not respond to survey questionnaires if they are selected in many samples. Usually, methods for sample coordination do not take into account any measure of the response burden that a unit has already expended in responding to previous surveys. We introduce such a measure into a new method by adapting a spatially balanced sampling scheme, based on a generalization of Poisson sampling, together with a negative coordination method. The goal is to create a double control of the burden for these units: once by using a measure of burden during the sampling process and once by using a negative coordination method. We evaluate the approach using Monte-Carlo simulation and investigate its use for controlling for selection “hot-spots” in business surveys in Statistics Netherlands.

Issue Number: 2023002