Online Program

Banff Automated Edit and Imputation on a Hog Survey

Keywords: Banff,edit,imputation

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts surveys within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Traditionally, editing and imputation is done manually via Blaise, which is labor intensive. To reduce costs NASS purchased Statistics Canada’s Banff system for statistical editing and imputation. This system was applied to the hog survey in Minnesota and Nebraska for December 2010 and March 2011. After data collection and before any manual editing, the original data were processed through the Banff editing code, consisting of only commodity specific edits. Error localization via Banff found 575 records with errors. Imputation reduced the error count to 30, a 94.8% reduction in failing records. Records still in error were given the values derived from manual editing for calculating estimates. The resulting estimates were not significantly different from indications derived from the manually edited data in 36 of 48 comparisons. Work is underway to improve the questionnaire regarding some findings. These favorable results motivate implementation into the operational program.