Official Statistics

This article is a contribution to the discussion on the utility of spatial models in the context of Small Area Estimation (SAE) (see Cressie 1991; Pfeffermann 2002; Saei and Chambers 2003, 2005; Singh et al. 2005; Pratesi and Salvati 2008). The attention is on the Fay–Herriot model and its Mean Squared Error (MSE) when a common autocorrelation parameter among small areas is included. Firstly, we discuss the extent to which the spatial effects in data used for SAE motivate the introduction of an autocorrelation parameter in the Fay–Herriot model. Secondly, the performance of MSE estimators is discussed through a simulation study where the joint effect of the area level sampling variance and of the parameter estimation is shown. The importance of the strength of spatial autocorrelation among small areas is confirmed. The results are tenable for different sampling variance patterns. A case study with spatial dependence in the data is presented and estimates at small area level are prov...

Headlines relating to crime figures are inescapable in contemporary society, the reason for the great time and attention given to issue of crime is because of the importance of crime to the general public1. For this reason political parties have attempted to drive down the crime rate. 2 Crime statistics have become a central tool in assessing the crime rate; this is because crime figures are useful instruments in demonstrating criminal patterns. If particular patterns in crime emerge this can mean resources being targeted to exposed areas. 3 The official crime statistics are entirely based on records of 43 police forces within England and Wales. The Office for National Statistics now collects the official statistics. 4 The official statistics suggest that crime is decreasing, however whether this is reflective of society is doubted. This is because of the " dark figure " of crime. The term relates to the unaccounted crimes within the official statistics. The reason for crimes not being registered can vary depending on the offence and the victims. The impact of the dark figure is that firstly that the official figures are not reflective of the real criminality rate. A second issue that the dark figure of crime creates is that areas that need addressing are ignored, as they do not appear on the figures. 5 If particular crimes are not being accounted for and ignored the state is failing in its positive obligation in protecting individuals. 6 Therefore accounting for these crimes is vital in gaining a genuine picture of crime within England and Wales. The Crime Survey for England and Wales has produced figures that have attempted to address the dark figure of crime. The studies are conducted upon a survey-based methodology meaning victims' experience is accounted for rather than just crimes that are reported to the police. This means crimes that may not appear within the official police records will be accounted for within the crime survives. Both figures show that crime is on a decline from the peak of the 1990's however the police records fail to account to near 5 million offences a year. This essay will progress to critically evaluate whether the official figures are truly valid in reflecting the level of criminality in England and Wales. Firstly the essay will examine the limitations of the official police recorded statistics, addressing issues within the figures of reporting, recording and counting rules. The essay will advance to identify police culture that specifically creates dark figure of crime with a link to gendered victimisation. The essay will conclude with an in depth look at gendered crime against women such as rape and other sexual offences and why these offences are underrepresented within official police crime statistics.

У  статті  розглядаються  статистичні  показники,  які  характеризують  результати  виявлення
правоохоронними  органами  України  злочинних  організацій  за  період  2014  –  2017  рр.,  досліджується
відповідність  офіційної  статистичної  звітності  реальному  стану  справ  щодо  активності  злочинних
організацій у країні.

Several methods exist which can adjust for trading day and holiday effects in monthly economic time series. This paper reviews and compares two such methodologies for conducting proper adjustments. The two methodologies are based upon the U.S. Census Bureau's X-12-ARIMA method and one developed by the Statistical Offices of the European Communities, commonly referred to as Eurostat. Three different methods are used to compare the U.S. Census Bureau procedure and the Eurostat-inspired procedure. These methods are spectral analysis, samplesize corrected AIC comparisons, and examination of out-of-sample forecast errors. Finally, these comparisons are conducted using nearly 100 U.S. Census Bureau time series of manufacturing data, retail sales, and housing starts. This empirical study is the first of its kind and therefore provides an important contribution to the seasonal adjustment community.

alexandre de Paiva Rio camargo 2 O leitor está diante de uma obra madura, resultado de sólida e longeva parceria intelectual entre os autores, que há vinte e cinco anos têm se dedicado à política dos números e à sócio-história da estatística. Não por acaso, o livro em tela consiste na revisão e ampliação de oito artigos publicados entre 1997 e 2009 em prestigiosos periódicos canadenses, americanos e franceses, acrescidos de uma esclarecedora introdução que dá unidade e fio condutor à leitura. Nesta extensa trajetória, cumpre destacar a realização, em setembro de 1999, de um ciclo de conferências na sua instituição de origem, a Université du Québec à Montréal, que deu origem ao instigante livro L´Ère du Chiffre: Systèmes Statistiques et Traditions Nationales (Beaud; Prévost, 2000). Na ocasião, os autores coordenaram os trabalhos de nomes como Ian Hacking, Alain Desrosières,

In this paper, we describe and discuss opportunities for big data in official statistics. Big data come in high volume, high velocity and high variety. Their high volume may lead to better accuracy and more details, their high velocity may lead to more frequent and more timely statistical estimates, and their high variety may give opportunities for statistics in new areas. But there are also many challenges: there are uncontrolled changes in sources that threaten continuity and comparability, and data that refer only indirectly to phenomena of statistical interest. Furthermore, big data may be highly volatile and selective: the coverage of the population to which they refer may change from day to day, leading to inexplicable jumps in time-series. And very often, the individual observations in these big data sets lack variables that allow them to be linked to other datasets or population frames. This severely limits the possibilities for correction of selectivity and volatility. Also, with the advance of big data and open data, there is much more scope for disclosure of individual data, and this poses new problems for statistical institutes. So, big data may be regarded as so-called nonprobability samples. The use of such sources in official statistics requires other approaches than the traditional one based on surveys and censuses. A first approach is to accept the big data just for what they are: an imperfect, yet very timely, indicator of developments in society. In a sense, this is what national statistical institutes (NSIs) often do: we collect data that have been assembled by the respondents and the reason why, and even just the fact that they have been assembled is very much the same reason why they are interesting for society and thus for an NSI to collect. In short, we might argue: these data exist and that’s why they are interesting. A second approach is to use formal models and extract information from these data. In recent years, many new methods for dealing with big data have been developed by mathematical and applied statisticians. New methods like machine-learning techniques can be considered alongside more traditional methods like Bayesian techniques. National statistical institutes have always been reluctant to use models, apart from specific cases like small-area estimates. Based on experience at Statistics Netherlands, we argue that NSIs should not be afraid to use models, provided that their use is documented and made transparent to users. On the other hand, in official statistics, models should not be used for all kinds of purposes.

Drawing on a range of national and international literature, this scoping paper explores some aspects of 'who are we' within a New Zealand context. Throughout the world the conceptualisation of ethnicity, or in some countries race, is undergoing significant change. There are many drivers including high rates of international migration, a vibrant indigenous rights movement in some countries, growing incidence and recognition of ethnic intermarriage, a concern about racism and discrimination, and, connected with this, a debate around how to support and, in some situations, integrate increasingly diverse populations into the wider community. Against this background, the paper draws together some ideas in the following areas: ethnogenesis; the official construction of ethnicity in New Zealand; ethnic intermarriage, and related to that, the transmission of ethnicity to children and multiple ethnicity; ethnic mobility; indigeneity; genetics, the human genome project and ethnicity; and the recent growth of New Zealander responses in the New Zealand census. It is not possible to draw many strong conclusions from the burgeoning national and international literature except there is a very vigorous and complex debate taking place about identity in most countries around the world. While there are some commonalities in the international debates, many local factors affect country specific discussions. However, some of the very broad threads that can be drawn from the literature include: while it is clear that for some people, and in some situations, ethnicity is a critical and daily part of their identity, for others ethnicity can be a minor part of identity or, in particular contexts, ethnicity might have little meaning; that identities are always emerging; that ethnicity is multi dimensional and that, in most countries, there is some fluidity of ethnicity; that identity is not only expressed but is perceived and observed and this perception of others can forge, reinforce and, at times, restrict identities; that the division of the world population, or the population of specific countries, into neat, non-overlapping groups is increasingly problematic; and that official definitions of ethnicity officially may not match all that closely ideas of 'who we are' personally. All of this suggests that, from a New Zealand policy perspective, while ethnicity can be an important analytical variable, much care is needed in its use.

For a long time, one of my dreams was to describe the nature of uncertainty axiomatically, and it looks like I've finally done it in my co∼eventum mechanics! Now it remains for me to explain to everyone the co∼eventum mechanics in the most approachable way. This is what I'm trying to do in this work. The co∼eventum mechanics is another name for the co∼event theory, i.e., for the theory of experience and chance which I axiomatized in 2016 [1, 2]. In my opinion, this name best reflects the co∼event-based idea of the new dual theory of uncertainty, which combines the probability theory as a theory of chance, with its dual half, the believability theory as a theory of experience. In addition, I like this new name indicates a direct connection between the co∼event theory and quantum mechanics, which is intended for the physical explanation and description of the conict between quantum observers and quantum observations [4]. Since my theory of uncertainty satises the Kolmogorov axioms of probability theory, to explain this co∼eventum mechanics I will use a way analogous to the already tested one, which explains the theory of probability as a theory of chance describing the results of a random experiment. The simplest example of a random experiment in probability theory is the " tossing a coin ". Therefore, I decided to use this the simplest random experiment itself, as well as the two its analogies: the " "flipping a coin " and the " spinning a coin " to explain the co∼eventum mechanics, which describes the results of a combined experienced random experiment. I would like to resort to the usual for the probability theory " coin-based " analogy to explain (and first of all for myself) the logic of the co∼eventum mechanics as a logic of experience and chance. Of course, this analogy one may seem strange if not crazy. But I did not come up with a better way of tying the explanations of the logic of the co∼eventum mechanics to the coin-based explanations that are commonly used in probability theory to explain at least for myself the logic of the chance through a simple visual " coin-based " model that clarifies what occurs as a result of a combined experienced random experiment in which the experience of observer faces the chance of observation. I hope this analogy can be useful not only for me in understanding the co∼eventum mechanics.

This note reviews insightful observations by K.R.W. (Ken) Brewer, found in his book published in 2002, with regard to the degree of heteroscedasticity to be expected for survey populations. Details and implications are noted. -

--
-- Further please note:
The first sentence of the introduction could read as follows: "Heteroscedasticity, the change in variance of Y|predicted-y, or epsilon|predicted-y (in the simplest case, this would be for V(Y|x)), is very often referred to as a 'problem' that needs to be 'solved' or 'corrected.'" But heteroscedasticity in regression is a feature, not a bug.
-

For more, see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352134279_When_Would_Heteroscedasticity_in_Regression_Occur
...

/// Also note that delta at the top of page 5 is just a specific use of autocorrelation.

The variance and covariances only come from 'within cluster,' where here the 'cluster' is one datum of y for a given x (or for a given predicted y).

You yourself, or what is the same, your experience is such ``coin'' that, while you aren't questioned, it rotates all the time in ``free flight''. And only when you answer the question the ``coin'' falls on one of the sides: ``Yes'' or ``No'' with the believability that your experience tells you.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

المؤتمر الدولي العلمي الخامس للإحصائيين العرب
9-10/2/2016
القاهرة - جمهورية مصر العربية
"دور الإحصاء في إدارة الأزمات"
تزايدت في الآونة الأخيرة أهمية صحافة البيانات أو الصحافة المستندة إلى البيانات، وهي صحافة متخصصة في إبراز الدور المتزايد للبيانات الرقمية والمرسومة في إنتاج قصص خبرية تضم عرضا مرئيا مبسطا للبيانات يسهل على الجمهور فهمه واستيعابه.
وقد مثل التطور الهائل في وسائل الاتصال ووفرة البيانات على شبكة الانترنت ومواقع التواصل الاجتماعي، وما نعيشه حاليا من ثورة البيانات وتدفق البيانات الكبيرة والمعقدة جدا تحديا كبيرا في طرق عرض ونشر البيانات بالقوالب الصحفية التقليدية، ومن هنا تبرز أهمية صحافة البيانات في عصر التكنولوجيا الرقمية.
من جانب آخر أدى التدفق الهائل للبيانات إلى افتقار أغلب هذه البيانات إلى المصداقية والموثوقية، ومن هنا تأتي أهمية استخدام الإحصاءات الرسمية كمصادر لصحافة البيانات. وقد بدأت الحكومات إدراك أهمية نشر البيانات والإحصاءات وإتاحتها للجمهور، وهنا يأتي دور الصحفي للاستفادة من هذه البيانات واستخلاص تقارير صحفية لتوعية الجمهور. كما تؤدي صحافة البيانات دورها في تحسين جودة البيانات الرسمية. وتتناول هذه الورقة البحثية النقاط التالية:
 التعريف بصحافة البيانات وتطورها.
 أهمية صحافة البيانات.
 دور صحافة البيانات في نشر وإتاحة الإحصاءات الرسمية.
 دور صحافة البيانات في تحسين جودة الإحصاءات الرسمية.
 نماذج من صحافة البيانات.
 خطوات العمل في صحافة البيانات.

The explosion in the amount of data, called “data deluge”, is forcing to redefine many scientific and technological fields, with the affirmation in any environment of Big Data as a potential source of data.
Official statistics institutions a few years ago started to open up to external data sources such as administrative data. The advent of Big Data is introducing important innovations: the availability of additional external data sources, dimensions previously unknown and questionable consistency, poses new challenges to the institutions of official statistics, imposing a general rethinking that involves tools, software, methodologies and organizations.
The relative newness of the field of study on Big Data requires first of all an introduction phase, for addressing the problems of definition and for defining the areas of technology involved and the possible fields of application.
The challenges that the use of Big Data poses to institutions that deal with official statistics are then presented in detail, after a brief discussion of the relationship between the new "data science" and statistics.
Although at an early stage, there is already a number, limited but growing practical experience in the use of Big Data as a data source for use in statistics by public (and private) institutions. The review of these experiences can serve as a stimulus to address in a more conscious and organized way the challenges that the use of this data source requires all producers of official statistics.
The worldwide spread of data sources (web, e-commerce, sensors) has also prompted the statistical community to take joint action to tackle the complex set of methodological, technical and legal problems. And so many national statistical institutes along with the most prestigious international organizations have initiated joint projects that will develop in the coming years to address the complex issues raised by Big Data for statistical methodology and computer technology.

This book examines the history of racial classifications in Puerto Rico censuses, starting with the Spanish censuses and continuing through the US ones. Because Puerto Rican censuses were collected regularly over hundreds of years, they are fascinating “test cases” to see what census categories might have been available and effective in shaping everyday ones. Published twentieth-century censuses have been well studied, but this book also examines unpublished documents in previous centuries to understand the historical precursors of contemporary ones. State-centered theories hypothesize that censuses, especially colonial ones, have powerful transformative effects. In contrast, this book shows that such transformations are affected by the power and interests of social actors, not the strength of the state. Thus, despite hundreds of years of exposure to the official dichotomous and trichotomous census categories, these categories never replaced the continuous everyday ones because the census categories rarely coincided with Puerto Rican’s interests.

Turkish Population in Bulgaria According to Official
Censuses (1878-1934)
Bulgaria, one of the first countries to be conquered by the Ottoman after
transition to Rumelia, is the leading territory where large numbers of Turks settled. According to Bulgarian demographer G. Th. Danailof, as a result of settlement policies, Turkish population was in majority in Bulgaria from 16th century to the beginning of 19th century. In 1876, Turkish
and Bulgarian populations were almost the same. After the war between Turks and Russians of 1877-1878 the situation changed continuously to the disadvantage of Turks. Bulgarian Principality, which was made an autonomous principality under the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Berlin,
in the very first years of its establishment, formed an official statistics institution in 1880’s and from this date on, carried out regular cencuses. In this study, the institution’s data about Turks are analyzed and their consistency is studied.
Key words: Turk, Bulgarian, Population, Statistics, Migration.

EUROSTAT L-2920 Luxembourg -Tel. (352) 43 01-1 -www.europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/ Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities. Its task is to gather and analyse figures from the different European statistical offices in order to provide comparable and harmonised data for the European Union to use in the definition, implementation and analysis of Community policies. Its statistical products and services are also of great value to Europe's business community, professional organisations, academics, librarians, NGOs, the media and citizens.

1.3.5. La georeferenziazione nelle problematiche socioeconomiche e l'econometria spaziale 41 1.3.6. La georeferenziazione nell'ambito della problematica delle piccole aree 43 2. GEOREFERENZIAZIONE E GEOCODIFICA NEL PSN 2008-2010 51 2.1. Introduzione 51 2.2. Rassegna critica del PSN: una lettura ragionata nell'ottica della georeferenziazione e della geocodifica 56 2.2.1. Macro-settori 56 2.2.2. Area "Territorio e ambiente" 58 2.2.3. Area "Popolazione e società" 61 2.2.4. Area "Amministrazioni pubbliche e servizi sociali" 64 2.2.5. Area "Mercato del lavoro" 70 2.2.6. Area "Sistema economico" 72 2.2.7. Area "Settori economici" 78 2.2.8. Area "Conti economici e finanziari" 84 2.2.9. Area "Metodologie e strumenti generalizzati" 85 2.2.10. Considerazioni di sintesi 86 3. PROPOSTA PER L'IMPIEGO DEI DATI GEOREFERENZIATI DELLA STATISTICA UFFICIALE PER LE ANALISI SPAZIALI 89 3.1. Introduzione 89 3.2. Considerazioni sulle potenzialità offerte dall'utilizzo dei riferimenti spaziali 100 APPENDICI 105

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) is not just a standard format for data exchange but it is in reality a set of technical and statistical standards and guidelines, IT architecture and IT tools with the objective of exchange and sharing of statistical data and metadata, efficiently. SDMX Content-Oriented Guidelines (COG) recommend practices for creating interoperable data and metadata sets using SDMX technical standards, focusing on the harmonization of specific concepts that are common to a large number of statistical domains. As well as commonly understood data structure definitions (DSDs) allows mapping the exchanged data messages from and to internal statistical databases and systems, also commonly understood metadata structure definitions (MSDs) allow mapping metadata from and to statistical information systems that may be technologically or linguistic diverse. To establish these common structures, cross-domain concepts that are commonly used in SDMX messages have been identified.

This article presents the results of a pilot feasibility study comparing two alternative recruitment approaches based on Respondent Driven Sampling using initial seeds selected from a US nationally representative panel, AmeriSpeak, to augment the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) respondents to a short web survey on smoking, discrimination, and health. In the nomination condition after completing the survey both LGBT and non-LGBT seeds were invited to share the names and email address of up to four LGBT persons they knew. In the recruitment condition, seeds were given four unique PINs and links to the survey to distribute to LGBT persons. Both conditions were successful in producing new LGBT respondents. The recruitment condition was much more productive. LGBT seeds (and their recruits) were much connected to and willing to contact other LGBT people they knew to participate in a survey. Comparisons of characteristics and responses from the initial samples and ...

This deliverable DIII.1.2 is part of work package 3 in which indicators are gathered on the extent of misconduct and how institutions respond to breaches of scientific integrity. As a part of the empirical phase in PRINTEGER it contributes to our analysis of what policies and organizational responses are most likely to engender a culture of integrity in research organisations. The exploration of the incidence of misconduct is combined with the institutional response, since it is partly through this response that misconduct is made explicit or even defined.
This deliverable reflects on one of the key questions in the scientific integrity debate; what is the incidence or extent of misconduct in science? This is one of the questions raised many years ago, but a clear-cut answer is not available and may be even impossible to formulate. What we know about misconduct in science has for the largest part been derived from self-report studies and rough estimations in statistics of universities, control agencies or funding bodies. Therefore, it remains difficult to conclude whether or not these estimations are correct, significant and reliable.
In this deliverable, we report about our attempt to gather empirical data on breaches of integrity that have ended up in official administrative or institutional (academic) files e.g. cases which are visible in administrative procedures of research and research funding institutions or bodies for investigating misconduct cases. With this report, we do not pretend to have found a clear answer to the incidence question. We do however aim to make visible the procedural chain that is followed when a case of misconduct comes to the surface. Besides a ‘mapping’ exercise, we aim at discussing theoretical and methodological issues when it comes to gathering data relying upon official procedures. Registration practices differ greatly from one research institution to another, from one country to another. This makes comparative research in general (and between the countries involved in this deliverable) very difficult if not impossible.
However, we argue that issues concerning denunciation, discovery and registration practices, whistle blowing, transparency, gaining access, confidentiality, reputational bias etc. are precisely worth a close scrutiny and must be discussed when doing research on the prevalence of misconduct in science in a European context. Indeed, in our view these aspects of the incidence question are not merely technical (or methodological) but they reveal a lot about the nature of scientific misconduct and about how scientific integrity and misconduct are intimately intertwined with daily scientific and academic practices and organization. They are mutually constitutive. Hence, there may be significant differences between disciplinary scientific practices as well as between national science systems (countries). It reveals a lot about how alleged breaches of integrity and misconduct are experienced, detected, reported, processed, registered and reacted upon.
Starting from a state of the art of what has been measured in previous research, we focused on the biases that have to be taken into account when measuring the extent and incidence of misconduct. Besides a discussion on issues related to the use of official statistics, self-report studies and reputational biases we reflect on the conceptual issues embedded in the process of registration and their consequences for registering practices in administrative procedures. In a next step, we discuss the separate methodologies of the partners involved in this deliverable and the results that were obtained. This report wraps up with a concluding part, reflecting on future directions for research on this topic and the data sources that are useful to measure misconduct in science.

For the first time in 2018 the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat) implemented the annual Permanent Population Census which relies on the Population Base Register (PBR) and the Population Coverage Survey (PCS). This article provides a general overview of the PCS sampling design, which makes use of the PBR to correct population counts with the extended dual system estimator (Nirel and Glickman 2009). The sample allocation, proven optimal under a set of precision constraints, is based on preliminary estimates of individual probabilities of over-coverage and under-coverage. It defines the expected sample size in terms of individuals, and it oversamples the sub-populations subject to the risk of under/over coverage. Finally, the article introduces a sample selection method, which to the greatest extent possible satisfies the planned allocation of persons in terms of socio-demographic characteristics. Under acceptable assumptions, the article also shows that the sampling strategy enh...

Demographic trends indicate an aging population, highlighting the importance of collecting valid survey data from older adults. One potential issue when surveying older adults is use of technology to collect data on sensitive topics. Survey technologies like A-CASI and IVR have not been used with older adults to measure elder mistreatment. We surveyed 903 adults age 60 and older in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (U.S.) with random assignment to one of four survey modes: (1) CAPI, (2) A-CASI, (3) CATI; and (4) IVR. We assessed financial, psychological, and physical mistreatment, and examined feasibility of A-CASI and IVR, and effects on prevalence estimates relative to CAPI and CATI. Approximately 83% of elders randomized to A-CASI/IVR used each technology, although 28% of respondents in the A-CASI condition refused to use headphones and read the questions instead. A-CASI produced higher six month prevalence rates of financial and psychological mistreatment than CAPI. IVR produced hi...

This study compares five techniques to evaluate survey questions --expert reviews, cognitive interviews, quantitative measures of reliability and validity, and error rates from latent class models. It is the first such comparison that includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. We examined several sets of items, each consisting of three questions intended to measure the same underlying construct. We found low consistency across the methods in how they rank ordered the items within each set. Still, there was considerable agreement between the expert ratings and the latent class method and between the cognitive interviews and the validity estimates. Overall, the methods yield different and sometimes contradictory conclusions with regard to the 15 items pretested. The findings raise the issue of whether results from different testing methods should agree.

Türkçe

Bireylere işlerin nasıl yapılması gerektiğini belirlemede yardımcı olan yol gösterici değerler, ilkeler ve standartlar olarak tanımlanan etik kavramı, son yıllarda dünyada ve Türkiye‟de hızla artan yolsuzluk ve yozlaşmalar sonucunda önem kazanmış ve bu konuya ait bir literatür oluşmaya başlamıştır.

Bu çalışmada, genel olarak etik kavramı ve kamu yönetiminde etik ile resmi istatistik üretim sürecinde yer alan etik ilkeler, uluslararası uygulamalar dikkate alınarak incelenmiş ve teorik bilgilere katkı sağlaması amacıyla alan uygulaması gerçekleştirilmiştir.

Kadro unvanları bazında tabakalı örnekleme yöntemi ile seçilen kurum personeli ile internet üzerinden yapılan anketin sonuçları ayrıntılı olarak yorumlanmış ve önerilerde bulunulmuştur.

English

Ethics, the guiding values, principles and standards that help people to determine how things ought to be done, has gained importance in consequence of the rapid boom of corruption and degeneration in recent years and its own literature has been started to develop.

In this study; concepts of ethics and public administration ethics, and ethical principles within the official statistics production process has been analyzed taking into account international practices. Besides, field application has been conducted in order to contribute to the theoretical background.

An online survey has been conducted with TurkStat staff, who has been selected by stratified sampling method on the basis of cadre titles, results have been interpreted in detail and recommendations have been submitted.

The book about the eventology ~ a science about events and its applications to problems of management of sets of events ~ a new direction in philosophy, mathematics and event management (see English version of the book: https://www.academia.edu/38605343/).
This book outlines ideas that inspired me while I was trying to build a new event science, eventology. Not each of these ideas was developed, but all of them inspired me in the construction of eventology, and then in the discovery of a revolutionary theory of experience and chance, co~eventum mechanics. (see, for example, https://www.academia.edu/34357251,
https://www.academia.edu/34373279,
https://www.academia.edu/34390291,
https://www.academia.edu/38368776,
https://www.academia.edu/38154263 and so on).

The aim of this paper is to raise awareness on the consequences of dissemination of official statistics through online media that uses clickbait headlines to generate traffic. In order to tackle on this issue, a Natural Language Processing (NLP) model was developed in order to distinguish the clickbait headline from the non-clickbait one when it comes to articles presenting information from the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute press releases. The yielded results are rather satisfactory as the parts-of-speech features model achieved an accuracy for 92% of the cases.

Recent research has attempted to examine the proportion of interviewer variance that is due to interviewers systematically varying in their success in obtaining cooperation from respondents with varying characteristics (i.e., nonresponse error variance), rather than variance among interviewers in systematic measurement difficulties (i.e., measurement error variance) -that is, whether correlated responses within interviewers arise due to variance among interviewers in the pools of respondents recruited, or variance in interviewer-specific mean response biases. Unfortunately, work to date has only considered data from a CATI survey, and thus suffers from two limitations: Interviewer effects are commonly much smaller in CATI surveys, and, more importantly, sample units are often contacted by several CATI interviewers before a final outcome (response or final refusal) is achieved. The latter introduces difficulties in assigning nonrespondents to interviewers, and thus interviewer variance components are only estimable under strong assumptions. This study aims to replicate this initial work, analyzing data from a national CAPI survey in Germany where CAPI interviewers were responsible for working a fixed subset of cases.

We examine the effects of interviewer-respondent familiarity on both response patterns and rates of item nonresponse when self-administered questions (SAQs) are used. We use SAQ data from a survey in which the researchers experimentally ensured that there would be varying degrees of familiarity between interviewers and respondents. Our results reveal only minimal differences in response patterns by degree of prior acquaintance between interviewer and respondent, indicating that SAQs are effective at eliminating potential bias stemming from such relationships. Our results for item nonresponse depend on how we measure the relationship between interviewer and respondent; but in all cases, it is clear that prior knowledge of one another, far from harmful, leads to low nonresponse rates to SAQs. Thus, researchers using SAQs may not need to adhere to the norm that interviewers and respondents must be strangers, with practical and cost-effective consequences for data collection.