Online Program

Questionnaire Communication with Large Non-Financial Enterprises (307986)

Keywords: The design of a new complex survey for the very large non-financial enterprises in the Netherlands: process, methods, and lessons learned

Questionnaire communication with large non-financial enterprises Ger Snijkers, Statistics Netherlands, g.snijkers@cbs.nl

To achieve the goals of collecting consistent data at enterprise level, having the new conceptual data model and the previous surveys as a starting point, a new combined electronic questionnaire was developed. The development process started in 2015, and consisted of several steps:

• A feasibility study was conducted in 2015:5 enterprises were visited to study the availability of the requested data and the business response process. This study resulted in a number of requirements which served as input for the questionnaire design, thus tailor the questionnaire to the enterprises’ response process. • The questionnaire architecture was developed in 2015-2016. This included a full overview of all variables in the questionnaire (including a questionnaire schedule), as well as a design of the user-interface. The latter was tested for usability issues; the 5 enterprises were visited again. • A first draft was developed in 2017: version 1. This version included only a few major modules. This version was pre-tested. • And extended draft was developed in 2017: version 2. This version included all modules. • Version 3, the fully developed questionnaire, had to be ready before the end 2017, since 2018 was a pilot year, in which businesses were given the opportunity to prepare for the new survey in 2019. • The fieldwork started in April 2019. In March the final version of the questionnaire (version 4) had to be ready and implemented, including all additional materials (manuals, web video’s, etc.; www.cbs.nl/balanceofpayments).

During the presentation, we will discuss the questionnaire development process in more detail, discuss the results per step, and show the final questionnaire design features. Also, we will discuss lessons learned, e.g. during the development process we had to go back to the data model: this process is not linear.