Survey Methodology
Adaptive survey designs to minimize survey mode effects – a case study on the Dutch Labor Force Survey

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by Melania Calinescu and Barry SchoutenNote 1

  • Release date: December 17, 2015
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Abstract

Assessing the impact of mode effects on survey estimates has become a crucial research objective due to the increasing use of mixed-mode designs. Despite the advantages of a mixed-mode design, such as lower costs and increased coverage, there is sufficient evidence that mode effects may be large relative to the precision of a survey. They may lead to incomparable statistics in time or over population subgroups and they may increase bias. Adaptive survey designs offer a flexible mathematical framework to obtain an optimal balance between survey quality and costs. In this paper, we employ adaptive designs in order to minimize mode effects. We illustrate our optimization model by means of a case-study on the Dutch Labor Force Survey. We focus on item-dependent mode effects and we evaluate the impact on survey quality by comparison to a gold standard.

Key Words: Mode-specific selection bias; Mode-specific measurement bias; Survey costs; Survey quality.

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Survey Methodology publishes articles dealing with various aspects of statistical development relevant to a statistical agency, such as design issues in the context of practical constraints, use of different data sources and collection techniques, total survey error, survey evaluation, research in survey methodology, time series analysis, seasonal adjustment, demographic studies, data integration, estimation and data analysis methods, and general survey systems development. The emphasis is placed on the development and evaluation of specific methodologies as applied to data collection or the data themselves. All papers will be refereed. However, the authors retain full responsibility for the contents of their papers and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board or of Statistics Canada.

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© Minister of Industry, 2015

Catalogue no. 12-001-X

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