1. 1 On cost efficiency - Tracking and tracing in the Norwegian EU-SILC Are the benefits from achieving one more respondents worth the effort? Bengt Oscar Lagerstrøm, Statistics Norway Paper presented at q2014, Vienna 1

2. Motivation 1 2

3. Motivation 2 Non-response in itself is not a good measure of non- response errors (Curtin, Presser and Singer 2000, Groves and Dipko 2004). Heerwegh, Abts and Loosveld (2007) show that although the non-response rate is higher than the non-contact rate, the proportion of non-response error is significantly larger due to non-contact than to refusal. 3

4. Steinsson and Lagerstrøm (2010) Non-response in current wave under-estimates social indicators (Gini-index, at-risk-of-poverty, S80/S20) Drop outs in the next wave has higher social indicators then respondents in both current wave and the next wave. Both drop-outs and late respondent have higher variation in their income distribution Non-response under estimates the income distribution in both Iceland and Norway and higher non-response rates increase the difference 4

5. Karlsson, Jónasdóttir and Lagerstrøm (2013) Manual tracing of telephone numbers increase the representativeness (age under 45, single households, non- natives) Only minor effects on a large set of indicators (Norway) 5

6. Contact rate, cooperation rate and response rate after source of telephone number. 2012 Contact rateCooperation rateResponse rate Working numbers without errors (automated)0,8740,7240,632776 Working numbers with errors (automated)0,8450,4370,369265 Manual traced numbers0,7180,6510,467418 6

7. Contact rate after number of calls after different types of numbers. 2012 7

8. Distribution of time use InterviewContact and recruiting Working numbers without errors (automated)85.874.4 Working numbers with errors (automated)8.515.8 Manual traced numbers5.89.8 3,124 (31.2)6,876 (68.8) 8

9. Contact and recruiting hours and costs per completion (mean). 2012 CRHPC (min)CRHPC (€)Ratio (€) Working numbers without errors (automated)5731.35 Working numbers with errors (automated)12468.200.4597 Manual traced numbers12870.400.4453 9

10. New strategy to improve effect of tracing and reduce cost due to no contact –Increase efforts to identify non-effective numbers  Monitoring of the call-history during data collection  Maximum call-bakcs on a lower level  Interviewers –Increase efforts to ensure effective tracing  Identify effective tracing procedures  centralized tracers –Increase use of new sources for telephone numbers  Administrative registers 10