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Exploring Causes and Effects of Perceived Response Burden

Keywords: Perceived burden, actual burden, response behavior, data collection costs, Structural Business Survey

Statistical organizations care about the response burden caused by their data requests. One reason for this is the assumption that a too high response burden may result in lower data quality and higher costs for data collection. This paper explores the validity of these assumptions. Data from a satisfaction survey of respondents to the annual Structural Business Survey in the Netherlands are used to explore the causes of perceived response burden and how this burden affects response behavior. The findings indicate that 1) perceived burden is both affected by actual burden (time spent) and the attitude towards statistics and the statistical agency requesting the data; 2) perceived burden affects the timeliness of response.