The Challenges in compiling an Education Register in Iceland from multiple sources Ásta M. Urbancic A presentation at the ESSnet on Quality of Multisource Statistics Workshop, April 21-22, 2016

Reasons for register of completed education Work first started as data were needed for the 2011 census Previously only survey data were available on educational attainment Work completed that was necessary for the census, many parts left undone Admin project to complete the design of a statistical register of educational attainment and improve the data collection 11/05/2019

Sources for the new register The main source is the Register of Graduations, with all formal graduations in Iceland from 1995 The baseline is data from the 1981 census, which was never published Data gathered from other sources, like a jigsaw puzzle. Put bits and pieces together to make a more complete picture 11/05/2019

Additional sources – three groups Graduates from schools before the start of the Register of Graduations in 1995 Licences for a particular occupation (e.g. from ministries, Directorate of Health) Status at a particular point in time (e.g. Information on immigrants from the Directorate of Immigration, Information on recipients of unemployment benefits from the Directorate of Employment) 11/05/2019

Problems with available sources Biggest problem is that many Icelanders have studied abroad so information on their education is missing Information for immigrants is missing Gap between 1981 (1981 census) and 1995 (start of register of graduations) Conflicting information from one source to the next 11/05/2019

No common code for education There was no single code for educational attainment – each source had its own code A new national code for attainment level was developed in connection with the census Many agencies and companies are now adding information on education to their personnel files 11/05/2019

Problems with quality in old data All the data for the census were combined to check the quality and coverage Do old data refer to students or graduates? National ID number, not available in older data – matching on names or names and date of birth Missing or faulty information, e.g. date of graduation Limited information on education completed 11/05/2019

Problems with licence data Little or no information on graduation date Changes in qualification requirements through time (e.g. teachers, nurses) Provide minimum qualifications to obtain licence 11/05/2019

Problems with status data Different levels of information, education grouped into 3, 7 or 30 groups, reclassification needed Little information on graduation date Often little information on field of education 11/05/2019

How to fill the gap of education from abroad? Get Registers Iceland to include education on forms completed by people moving to Iceland Examine the possibility of other data channels, e.g. internet scraping, census or survey of immigrants or return immigrants Exchange of data with other statistical institutes Self declaration of education 11/05/2019

Problems with quality in the register Relevance Data providers have their own agenda Accuracy Will we accept bad information (alpha errors)? Will we throw out good information (beta errors)? Coverage subpopulations not well covered (foreign graduations) Coherence are the results comparable with information from other sources, e.g., the labour force survey? Comparability over time and space? New classification applied to all data 11/05/2019

Main method for dealing with the quality issues Development of deterministic data editing processes Creation of rules or imputation to assign missing values Creation of rules to prioritize certain sources rather than others Decide how to select which records will be used as the highest attainment at a given time when there is more than one source with similar information 11/05/2019

Checks and corrections Checks and corrections using other sources: National register of the population, Student register, StatIce sample surveys Discrepancies in data checked: Comparison of birthdate, date of death and date of graduation Recoding of education, sometimes from three groups (low, medium, high) to more detailed classification 11/05/2019

Work underway to run the register Set up forms that insert the data collected in the future into a table connected to the education register Set up translations for data collected from sources outside StatIce into the new classification of education, a translation for each source Design of the register – how it will be set up 11/05/2019

Questions? 11/05/2019