1. United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service United Nations Commission and Economic Commission for Europe Conference of European Statisticians April 21-23, 2008 A presentation by Dale Atkinson and Jeff Beranek for: UNECE, Vienna, Austria Slide 1

2. United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service Topic (vi) : Censuses. Further Improvements to an Edit and Imputation System for the 2007 United States Census of Agriculture A presentation by Dale Atkinson and Jeff Beranek for: UNECE, Vienna, Austria Slide 2

3. Slide 3 United States Census of Agriculture United States Census of Agriculture 2007: Scope and Background Shortcomings of 2002 Census Improvements to 2007 Census Planning for 2012

4. Slide 4 Scope and Background Quinquennial census of all US farms Responsibility of BOC through 1997; USDA/NASS since 1997 NASS implemented sweeping changes in 2002 Shortcomings in 2002 Census addressed for 2007 effort

5. Slide 5 Shortcomings of 2002 Scanning for data capture (OCR) Database model Slow speed/small edit batch size (75 records) Imputation/Donor pool creation and maintenance No quality control/quality assurance utilities Lack of testing

6. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings Scanning for data capture (OCR) introduced much erroneous data. Key From Image (KFI) and Optical Mark Recognition (OMR).

7. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings Database model Roles of databases optimally redefined.

8. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings Slow speed/small edit batch size (75 records) Faster edit (5-10 seconds/record), larger batch size (1000 records).

9. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings Imputation/Donor pool creation and maintenance Improved donor pool design and deeper seed pool.

10. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings No quality control/quality assurance utilities Designed, tested and implemented QC/QA utilities.

11. Slide 6 Responses to 2002 Shortcomings Lack of testing Aggressive, early testing of components and entire system.

12. Slide 7 Areas of Research for 2012 Data transfer between databases. Donor imputation and donor pool seeding/weighting of donor records. Editing of demographic and economic data. Shortcomings of 2007 form(s). Further implementation of selective editing.