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Metrics for Measuring Data Quality at NASS’s National Operations Center

Keywords: data collection, quality control, control charts, paradata

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) centralized much of its survey data collection activities at its new National Operations Center (NOC) in August 2011. Metrics measuring the quality of the data collected at the NOC and the production of NOC staff have been developed. In this paper, some select metrics will be discussed in depth. For these, topics such as the past use of the metric, requirements to measure and track it, benefits of tracking it, methods of displaying it, and how it improves data quality will be presented. Application to both interviewer evaluation and data collection process control will be examined. The use of control charts and other graphical methods to monitor the metrics will also be discussed and examples demonstrating these graphical methods will be provided.