The Future of Federal Household Surveys Summary of a Workshop (2011) / Chapter Skim
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8 Discussion and Next Steps
8 Discussion and Next Steps
Pages 89-96
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From page 89... ...
He argued that agencies should work together to develop contingency plans for situations in which a survey may have to be dropped, thinking about whether the statistical system collectively would still be able to produce some of the necessary data after a cut of this type. Robert Kominski voiced a similar concern, saying that federal statistical agencies tend to make decisions in a methodical and organized way, based on information available about the past.
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From page 90... ...
This was echoed in Groves's comments that people have to stop talking to just themselves and begin a dialogue with others whom they do not usually think about when they design data collections. Hal Stern raised the question of whether, given the costs of data collec tions, there is information currently collected by federal statistical agencies that goes beyond what is mandated or widely used.
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From page 91... ...
Groves warned that the timeliness of data releases is a particularly big con cern, because federal statistical agencies are out of sync with competing sources of information. For example, the quality of an alternative price index may be really poor, but if it is available in real time, then that may be a compelling argument for some uses.
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From page 92... ...
Abraham agreed, saying that when statistical agencies have gone out on a limb in the past and produced what amounts to experimental series, yet explained what they were doing clearly, the user base followed. Another concern was the lack of statisticians with the skills required to implement advanced modeling techniques.
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From page 93... ...
However, there are some obvious challenges emphasized by Abraham, including the burden placed on ACS respondents, the survey's inability to collect information that is comparable in depth to topicspecific surveys, and practical barriers that were brought up by the ACS team. The possibility of using the ACS as a sampling frame for other surveys was also discussed.
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From page 94... ...
He acknowledged that providing sample on a rolling basis would involve additional data management tasks, but he thought that it was an idea worth discussing. He would have also liked more discussion of the issue of misclassification in the sample provided and how it affects a sampling design that involves rare populations.
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From page 95... ...
Stern made a similar argument, saying that it is difficult to imagine that there would be political will in the United States for implementing something similar to what other countries are doing with administrative records, but that does not preclude it from discussion, because registers have the potential to offer enormous cost savings. BROADER INTEGRATION OF DATA COLLECTIONS A lot of the discussion centered around the more ambitious notion of inte gration advanced by Raghunathan, who used his own work to illustrate a way of thinking about a research problem in terms of a matrix of the information necessary to address it.
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From page 96... ...
For example, the NHIS could also pick up basic information related to education and housing, in addition to its current content. Abraham said that the initiatives in the area of administrative records also fit well with this model if one thinks beyond survey integration to envision data integration, in which administrative records are contributing an important piece.
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