1. Deirdre Giesen & Barbara Berkenbosch
Managing perceived response burden: why and how
Deirdre Giesen & Barbara Berkenbosch

2. Actual and perceived response burden
Actual response burden: time and/or money spent on complying with statistical data requests
Perceived response burden: subjective evaluation of effort spent . E.g.
Did you find it quick or time consuming?
Did you find it easy or difficult?
See also Dale & Haraldsen (2007) ‘Handbook for monitoring and evaluating business survey response burdens’.

3. Outline
Findings BLUE-ETS project: demonstrating need for management of perceived burden
Example of “Perception of Burden” project at Statistics Netherlands

4. Perception of Burden Project
Acknowledgements
BLUE-ETS work
CBS Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres van Grinsven, Ger Snijkers et al.
University of Ljubljana: Mojca Bavdaž, Irena Bolko et al.
SSB Gustav Haraldsen, Øyvin Kleven, Tora Löfgren, Dag Gravem et al.
SCB Boris Lorenc, Andreas Persson et al.
SORS Rudi Seljak et al.
University of Bergamo Sylvia Biffignandi
Perception of Burden Project
Barbara Berkenbosch, Daisy Debie, Lex Visser, Matthijs Jacobs ,Vronie de Haan, Jos van den Heuvel, Max Storms, Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres van Grinsven , Ger Snijkers et al.

5. BLUE-ETS research on burden and motivation
Measurement and reduction of response burden in official business surveys NSIs practice
Businesses’ perspectives on official statistics
Case studies
Analyses of data on burden and response behaviour in Sweden, Norway and Netherlands
Studies on effects of actions to reduce burden and/or increase motivation: Experiments on improving motivation in Sweden and Slovenia, studies on effects of questionnaire design in Norway and The Netherlands
BLUE-Enterprise and Trade Statistics project ( April 2010-March 2013)
EU FP7 project
See for all reports

6. Slovenian experiment (Bavdaž & Bolko 2013)6

7. Results BLUE-ETS case studies 1
Response burden related to response behaviour, e.g. more burden: lower and later response, more edits needed
Perceived burden related to actual burden but also to perception of NSI and usefulness statistics

8. Results BLUE-ETS case studies 2
Experiments aiming at increasing motivation by better communication did not show many of the expected effects
The two questionnaire studies showed that questionnaire redesign can reduce actual and perceived burden

9. Perception of Burden Project at SN
Ran from February 2012-August 2013
Part of government policy to reduce burden caused by statistics
Main goal: further intensify and coordinate actions to reduce perceived burden (projects aimed at reducing actual burden ran in parallel)
Main goal: improve businesses’ and business organisations perceptions of response burden created by SN surveys

10. Assess needs by
Brainstorming workshop with representatives from various parts of bureau to 1) make inventory of current knowledge and initiatives and 2) prioritise actions needed to reduce business respondents’ irritiations about our survyes.
Additional research: telephone survey of SMEs in our samples, re-analyses of data customer satisfaction survey, analyses of sentiments regarding SN in social media

11. Actions taken Improvement of letters
Show case approach: collaboration with businesses and business organisations in redesign of survey
Reduction of helpdesk waiting times
Improvement of service call center
Improvement of website

12. Plans for the future
Use ‘show case approach’ for future redesign projects
Develop permanent monitoring of perceived response burden
Redesign questionnaire systems to imporve uniformity and user friendliness of our questionnaires and to enable the production of survey calendars
Further professionalize our complaint handling

13. Thank you for your attention…
… and please have a look at all BLUE-ETS deliverables at