How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible A new statistical register linked to the French BR Sept.2011

Description of the French administrative BR SIRENE A national business register in which all businesses and their local units are registered : exhaustiveness (and more) Since 1994 : a unique identification number, at the core of the inter-administrative system 2011 : 8 million businesses and 9 million local units Content of SIRENE Identification data, address of local units, code identifying the principal business activity carried out Drawbacks of this administrative aspect Restricted to the legal units “You can’t do what you want” : the updating of SIRENE (for business statistics) comes up against its twofold role (administrative and statistical) How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

A complete overhaul of the annual business statistics 2005 : France launched RESANE, a “collection” of projects to overhaul its structural business statistics Three main purposes of this programme : to reduce the response burden on businesses to improve productivity => first results produced on 2009 to improve the quality of the business' statistics by taking into account group structures To achieve this 3rd objective, two projects in progress : “Profiling process” “Statistical Business Register” How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

A few words about the Profiling process Distribution of the entreprises Size of the groups (number of employees) So-called « profiled enterprises » Large groups (about 100) « Medium sized » groups (about 1 600) Small groups (about 40 000) >10 000 >=500 et =< 10 000 < 500 Legal units which are not in a group (one enterprise = one legal unit) So-called « non profiled enterprises » How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

Statistical Business Register Statistical units, data and links 1/2 A new register to record all these units : SIRUS (for “Systeme d’Identification au Répertoire des Unités Statistiques”) Enterprises (profiled and stand-alone legal units) Their local units Groups Legal units and their “production units” All the links between these statistical units (relationship between different types of statistical units and ownership rates) “Corporate networks”/ franchise “Usual” and new data : Institutional sector, legal form, main activity, size Categories of business (Art. 51 of the law on the modernisation of the economy) for the purpose of statistical & economic analysis, using number of employees, turnover and balance sheet total How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

Statistical Business Register Statistical units, data and links 2/2 UL 1 UL 10 UL 4 UL 9 UL 3 UL 8 UL 7 UL 2 UL 6 UL 5 E6 How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

Statistical Business Register A new way of recording and updating data More sources to update this statistical register : more “statistical” updates (infra-annual surveys) more automatized updates (since it guarantees coherent data) => all the possible updates have been classified, structured, in order to solve inconsistencies between several sources Metadata All data are dated All treatments are dated All sources of update are recorded Definition of “reference populations”, of basis for sampling To improve “coherence”, more communication to inform all survey managers that a data has been changed, an activity code updated, a unit ceased : the one and the same value for a specific day How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

To record the statistical burden Review : A unit can be included in several sampling frames (French NSI, Ministerial statistical departments) No centralization of samples (no quick and cheap means of ascertaining how many questionnaires an enterprise has been sent) Samples Survey managers Basis for sampling SIRUS With SIRUS : Recording of all the samples of all Business Surveys Building of a « background » of samples (in order to measure the past statistical burden) Link with the Conseil National de l’Information Statistique (CNIS) to get the programme which sets out the surveys for the coming year How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

To record the response burden Time needed by the businesses to fill in the questionnaire : Some surveys measure this time : 2009 : measurement introduced in the annual business survey (declarative measurement) systematically during the test phases (concerning a few dozen questionnaires) step of the framework of the ministerial modernisation process (measurement and reduction of the administrative burden) : from January 2012, this measurement has to be extended to every survey No response ? SIRUS records the fact that the questionnaire has been filled (or not, and the reason) Both information : A business has been sampled n times during the past year A business spent n hours on filling statistical questionnaires Data available for each kind of units (local units, enterprises, groups) but the most interesting : the burden on enterprises How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

To reduce the response burden To sample enterprises and no longer legal units – when possible To know how many questionnaires have been sent to a “profiled” enterprise will allow us to measure the costs / time savings when only one questionnaire can be sent To improve “negative co-ordination” (= to reduce the overlap between samples for different surveys) Used to share the response burden among responding units (when statistics are not correlated) Nowadays : two-by-two coordination of samples But a method (Chr. Hesse – Jales+) based on the survey burden is being tested with a view to developing it into a software package How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Sept.2011

Thank you for your attention How shall INSEE record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible Thank you for your attention Insee 18 bd Adolphe-Pinard 75675 Paris Cedex 14 www.insee.fr Informations statistiques : www.insee.fr / Contacter l’Insee 09 72 72 4000 (coût d’un appel local) du lundi au vendredi de 9h00 à 17h00 Contact Mrs Anne HUSSEINI-SKALITZ. Tél. : 33.(0)1.41.17.62.06 Courriel : anne.husseini-skalitz@insee.fr