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Abstract:
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The U.S. Census Bureau conducts annual and indicator surveys to measure the business activity across the retail, wholesale, and service sectors of the economy. The Business Sample Revision (BSR) uses the latest size and classification information obtained from the most recent Economic Census and the Census Bureau’s Business Register (BR) to select new samples approximately every five years. This ensures that the samples remain representative of the retail, wholesale, and services universes and redistributes burden for small- and mid-size firm respondents currently in the sample. The initial step of the BSR, universe extraction, creates an extract from the BR of all in-scope multiunit and singleunit establishments. Methodologists use administrative and Census data to compute a best estimate of each establishment’s measure of size (MOS) and determine the best MOS by performing ratio edits based on the data items used in the calculations of prospective MOS. This paper outlines the research conducted to improve the ratio edit methodology, and by extension, the methodology used in the MOS determination in preparation for the next BSR.
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