Impact of hidden methodological differences NESIS-workshop in Rome Mikael Åkerblom Statistics Finland

Contents International efforts to harmonise data ’Hidden differences Effects of globalisation Linguistic bias Institutional factors Different data sources and ways of collecting data What can we do?

International efforts to harmonise data EU legislation Other standards United Nations OECD and other international organisations Gentlemen agreements Benchmarking exercises Ad hoc data collection

Effects of globalisation Role of multinationals has strongly increased during the last years (financial sector, telecom, pulp&paper, car manufacturing) Decision making, strategic planning, cost accounting, R&D and innovation on a group or division of group level Therefore basic statistical units on the national level, like enterprises and establishments are less relevant to describe activities of global enterprises Statistics dependent on how multinationals are able to break down the figures between for them sometimes irrelevent units. Intergroup often non-monetary transactions may distort national aggregates One or few multinationals may completely dominate the picture for especially smaller countries, which makes problems of interpretation

Cultural and linguistic bias Attitudes towards surveys differ Translation of concepts and definitions might cause inconsistencies Examples R&D Technological innovation Technician Science

Institutional factors Organisations of enterprises influence all industrial breakdowns Combination of enterprises into groups Splitting up of enterprises into smaller establisment units Educational systems influence comparability of education indicators Degree structures are different Organisation of units (university systems differ between countries)

Different sources and ways of collecting data Different sources; registers and other administrative data, surveys (censuses, large or small scale samples), estimations Different survey methods and routines like face to face or phone interviews, mail surveys Different registers over various kind of units

What can we do Need to develop and implement indicators on globalisation Pay attention to careful translation of definitions and concepts to avoid misunderstandings The abovementioned reasons for hidden differences should be more explicitly incorporated in metadata