Modeling and Simulation of Survey Collection Using Paradata

• Activity Number: 141
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Government Statistics
• Author(s): Kristen Couture*+ and Elisabeth Neusy and Yves Bélanger
• Companies: Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada and Statistics Canada
• Keywords: microsimulation ; paradata ; data collection ; time slices

Abstract

In recent years, the cost of survey collection has grown significantly and nonresponse has increased. To counter these trends, strategies are being studied to optimize collection activities, resulting in a more time efficient and cost effective survey collection process. For example, recent initiatives for Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing surveys at Statistics Canada include experimenting with time slices, limiting the number of calls, and establishing calling priorities. Field testing new procedures however has its drawbacks: it is costly and it is difficult to control, which can render the results difficult to interpret. To address these issues, we describe in this paper the creation of a microsimulation system of the collection process which uses paradata as input. We discuss characteristics of the model as well as results of simulation runs with various parameters.