|
Abstract:
|
Financial data for Canadian local governments are collected through various quarterly and annual surveys, known collectively as Local Government Surveys. For the last ten years, these surveys have been mailing out questionnaires to the same sample of municipalities. Over the years this has led to an increase in response burden, especially for small municipalities. A redesign has been proposed where annually updated population counts of municipalities would be used to select a new yearly sample as follows: large municipalities with certainty, small municipalities with a probability based on their population size, and the exclusion of the smallest municipalities. This paper will briefly summarize the Local Government program and will mainly focus on the various methodological issues behind the sample redesign of the Local Government Surveys.
|
