Measuring discontinuities due to survey process redesigns
This paper develops a frame work for measuring discontinuities that are the result of redesigning a survey process.
A key requirement of repeated surveys conducted by national statistical institutes is the comparability of estimates over time, resulting in uninterrupted time series describing the evolution of population parameters. This is often an argument to keep survey processes unchanged as long as possible. It is nevertheless inevitable that a survey process will need to be redesigned from time to time, for example to improve or update methods or implement more cost effective data collection procedures. To avoid the implementation of a new survey process disturbing the comparability of estimates over time, it is important to quantify the impact on the estimates of a repeated survey. This paper presents a framework of statistical methods that can be used to measure the impact and manage the risk due to a survey process redesign.
