2. Requirements and guiding principles

This chapter describes legislation, statistical requirements and guiding principles relevant to developing questions for the BTS of Statistics Netherlands.

2.1 Statistical requirements

Statistics Netherlands applies strict requirements for all the figures it publishes. These requirements also apply to the development of new statistics, which is in essence the purpose of this study. Applicable legislation, such as the Statistics Netherlands Act, requires Statistics Netherlands to comply with various provisions. In addition, Statistics Netherlands has also committed itself to several quality requirements. The following provisions are used in this study. 

The four most important provisions of the Statistics Netherlands Act are: 

• Confidentiality: Statistics Netherlands may solely disseminate information in a non-identifiable manner. This means that no individual person, household, enterprise or institution can be identified. An exception is made for situations in which there are legitimate reasons to assume an enterprise or institution would not object to publication. 
• Publication: Statistics Netherlands will publish aggregated results in the public domain. 
• Administrative burden: Statistics Netherlands is obliged to minimise the administrative burden on its respondents and data suppliers as much as possible. Statistics Netherlands should use administrative sources to collect data. Data collection by means of surveys is only allowed if data is not available in administrative sources or if the data in administrative sources are not usable for statistical applications;
• Data collection: the Director General of Statistics Netherlands is authorised to request, for statistical purposes, data from enterprises when data from administrative sources fail to yield the necessary data. The data that can be requested and the categories of enterprises from which the data can be requested are designated by Order in Council. This applies to the BTS of Statistics Netherlands. The current CBS Data Acquisition Decree (in Dutch: Besluit gegevensverwerving CBS) stipulates that data may be requested concerning the economic and investment outlook from enterprises and institutions in all economic activities.

Statistics Netherlands is committed to the following quality requirements³⁾ to create reliable and consistent information:

• Relevance 
• Accuracy and reliability 
• Timeliness and punctuality 
• Coherence, comparability and consistency 
• Accessibility and clarity 

Statistics Netherlands also aims to maintain the continuity and to manage the costs by producing statistics efficiently.

2.2 Guiding principles

Business tendency surveys are implemented in various countries for many years. Common elements, best practices and harmonised principles which have emerged over time, provide guidance to assist in conducting these surveys successfully.

General guiding principles

Common elements and best practices of business tendency surveys include (UN, 2015: p. 1, 3, 14-15; OECD, 2003: p. 11):

• Business tendency surveys are tools for the assessment and analysis of economic development and fluctuations in the business cycle; 
• Questions should measure developments in the business activity or production at an early stage to timely capture business cycle developments;
• Questions should reflect topics that are sensitive to changes in the economic environment or activity;
• Questions should mainly be qualitative and focus on assessments, expectations, plans and constraints;
• Questions should be simple and intuitive to make it easy for respondents to complete the questionnaire quickly;
• The number of questions should be kept to a minimum in order to reduce response burden;
• Questions should be relevant from the perspective of the managers of enterprises and not only from a business cycle theory perspective;
• Business tendency surveys are not a substitute for quantitative data. They provide information additional to the existing set of quantitative statistics;
• When a business tendency survey has been established on a regular basis, it can be used for ad hoc enquiries (in response to significant shocks to the economy). Hence, the mechanism in place for carrying out regular business tendency surveys provides a flexible instrument for obtaining policy-relevant information in such situations (OECD, 2003: p. 11).

Joint Harmonised EU Programme of business and consumer surveys

Statistics Netherlands is a partner institute of the Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys (BCS). The EU BCS programme requires Statistics Netherlands to comply with its provisions. The BCS is conducted according to a common methodology, which consists of harmonised questionnaires and a common timetable. However, the national questionnaires may include additional questions beyond the harmonised ones (EC, 2023b: p. 3, 5).

2.3 Discussion

Business tendency surveys provide a flexible instrument for obtaining information. However, due to the nature of the instrument, including additional questions should be well-considered and be kept to a minimum. Although information needs may be relevant from a policy perspective, priorities have to be set. Which of the information needs can be measured with a questionnaire? Which of those are suitable to be asked on a regular basis? What are seen as the most important? And are respondents able to provide accurate answers to such questions? Omnibus and dedicated surveys⁴⁾ are better suited to gather ad-hoc information on broad topics like the green transition. Also, in-depth interviews are a good tool to study how events, beliefs and behaviour interact. Business tendency surveys can only provide general information about a topic rather than specific. By current Dutch legislation, data may only be requested from respondents in relation to the economic and investment outlook.