Evaluation of the Quality of Administrative Data Used in the Dutch Virtual Census

• Activity Number: 592
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: International Association of Survey Statisticians
• Author(s): Piet Daas*+ and Saskia Ossen and Martijn Tennekes and Eric Schulte Nordholt
• Companies: Statistics Netherlands and Statistics Netherlands and Statistics Netherlands and Statistics Netherlands
• Keywords: Quality ; Registers ; Checklist ; Census

Abstract

Since the last census based on a complete enumeration was held in 1971, the willingness of the population in the Netherlands to participate has decreased tremendously. Statistics Netherlands found an alternative in a Virtual Census, by using available administrative sources and surveys. This choice has lead to several methodological challenges. One of them is determining the effect of the quality of the sources on the combined result. For administrative sources this is a serious issue because the collection and maintenance is beyond the control of the Statistical Institute. It is therefore important that the Institute is able to determine the quality of such sources prior to use. For this purpose Statistics Netherlands has developed a quality framework. It consists of three high level views on the quality of administrative sources: a Source, a Metadata, and a Data view. The first two views are evaluated with a checklist that has already been applied successfully. Current research focuses on developing a systematic way to evaluate data quality. In this contribution the insights obtained in the research on the quality of administrative sources are applied to the Virtual Census.