Online Program

Response Burden: Introductory Overview Lecture

Keywords:

Internationally each year survey organisations send out millions of questionnaires to businesses selected to participate in business surveys. Some businesses may only receive one survey questionnaire a year whilst others receive numerous questionnaires for different surveys and for the different periods that the surveys are conducted e.g. monthly, quarterly and annual. From the perspective of the businesses these survey requests are an irritant that incur them costs and from which they receive no benefits - this can impact on how or if they respond. From the survey organisations perspective survey responses are vital to the quality of the final statistical outputs. A trade off therefore exists between the survey demands being placed on businesses and the need for quality statistics. Added complications come from the importance of large businesses in terms of their representation in numerous surveys and their importance (by weight) to the final statistical outputs; and increasing demands for data. This lecture provides an introductory overview of the issues, measurement and management of actual and perceived response burden in business surveys.