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Official statistics
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Official statistics are related directly to the field of statistics and cover all major areas of citizens' lives, such as economic and social development, living conditions , health , education , and the environment .
During the 16th and 17th centuries, statistics were a method for counting and listing populations and State resources. The term comes from the Latin status (state) indicating that the origin of the profession related to the needs of governments.
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Official statistics are related directly to the field of statistics and cover all major areas of citizens' lives, such as economic and social development, living conditions , health , education , and the environment .
During the 16th and 17th centuries, statistics were a method for counting and listing populations and State resources. The term comes from the Latin status (state) indicating that the origin of the profession related to the needs of governments. The term simply describes statistics from an organization or institution that officially belongs to the State. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, , "official statistics are statistics disseminated by the national statistical system, excepting those that are explicitly not to be official".
Another definition is given by Beimer and Lyberg in 2003
"Almost every country in the world has one or more government agencies (usually national institutes) that supply decision-makers and other users including the general public and the research community with a continuing flow of information (...). This bulk of data is usually called official statistics. Official statistics should be objective and easily accessible and produced on a continuing basis so that measurement of change is possible."
- Official statistics result from the collection and processing of data into statistical information by the government institution responsible for that subject-matter domain. They are then disseminated to stakeholders and the general public. Statistical information allows users to draw a relevant, reliable and accurate picture of the development of the country, compare differences between countries and changes over time. They enable stakeholders and decision makers to be well informed and develop policies for addressing actual development challenges.
- Official statistics make information on development accessible to the public and therefore assist in the accountability of public decision-making. One use of official statistics is to measure the impact of public policies and highlight the need for development.
Aim of official statistics
Official statistics provide a picture of a country or different phenomena through data, and images such as graph and maps. Statistical information covers different subject areas (economic, demographic, social etc.). Statistical information serves a variety of uses for monitoring developments in a country as well as provides basic information for decision making, evaluations and assessments at different levels, and - traditionally - governments. Official statistics are a key component of description and comparison of the situation and development of a country. They are also essential for non-material content such as unregistered migration and economic transactions.
The goal of national statistical agencies is to produce relevant, objective and statistics so that they keep people and organizations well informed about the aim and its development. They answer the public and users demands for better access to information, assisting good policy and decision-making.
In addition, demand by users for more information has significantly increased since computing technologies have greatly helped in dealing with growing volumes of . In recent years there has been an increasing demand of a broadening range of users to be able to access information sources quickly and easily. The Internet has been one answer to this request that is why statistical agencies have developed their abilities to satisfy more standardized delivery models to meet users' expectations.
Various categories
were adopted in 1992 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, . According to the first Principle "the official statistical information is an essential basis for development in the economic, demographic, social and environment fields and for mutual knowledge and trade among the states and peoples of the region".
Following is a list of the different statistical categories and their subgroups:
- Demographic statistics concern the evolution of and . They deal with the measurement of undeclared migration or measurement of emigration, migration flows, , and . Social statistics provide data on society, on the population and all that surrounds it.
Demographic and social statistics include: population and migration, , , , income and consumption, , human settlements and housing, , , political and other community activities, , living conditions, poverty and cross-cutting social issues, information society.
- Gender and special population groups statistics reflect the realities of the lives of women and men and policy issues related to such as domestic violence, violence against women, as well as elderly, , minority groups.
- Economic statistics is the branch of statistics that studies the economic activities of a country through macroeconomics statistics, , business statistics, globalisation, sectoral statistics, agriculture-forestry-fisheries, energy, mining-manufacturing-construction, transport, , , government finance-fiscal and statistics, and , , , .
The category includes econometrics which is a combination of economics and statistics, whose aim is to analyse the economic relationship.
Most common indicators used in official statistics
A country’s profile can be summarized using only figures and data classified in different categories. Statistical indicators provide an overview of the social, demographic and economic structure of the country. Moreover, these indicators enable making comparisons between countries on an international scale, with agreements on those indicators.
For population, the main indicators are:
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- Population density
- Population by age
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The gender statistics include:
In the employment category:
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- Employment in major sectors: agriculture, industry, services
There are many indicators for the economy:
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- GDP by major economic sectors: agriculture, industry, services
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For trade indicators we find:
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- Major import partners
- Major export partners
Environment indicators:
- Land use
- Water supply and consumption
- Environmental protection expenditure
- Generation and treatment of waste
- Chemical use
For the energy field:
- Total energy consumption
- Primary energy sources
- Energy consumption in transport
- Electricity consumption
- Consumption of renewable energy sources
Users
Official statistics are intended for a wide range of users including governments (central and local), research institutions, professional statisticians, journalists and the media, businesses, educational institutions and the general public.
There are three types of users: those with a general interest, business interest or research interest. Each of these user groups has different needs for statistical information.
Users with a general interest
Users with a general interest include the media, schools and the general public. They use official statistics in order to be informed on a particular topic, to observe trends within the society of a local area, country, region of the world.
Users with a business interest
Users with a business interest include decision makers and users with a particular interest for which they want more detailed information. For them, official statistics are an important reference, providing information on the phenomena or circumstances their own work is focusing on. For instance, those users will take some official statistics into consideration before launching a product, or deciding on a specific policy or on a marketing strategy. As with the general interest users, this group does not usually have a good understanding of statistical methodologies, but they need more detailed information than the general users.
Users with a research interest
Users with a research interest are universities, consultants and government agencies. They generally understand something about statistical methodology and want to dig deeper into the facts and the statistical observations; they have an analytical purpose in inventing or explaining interrelations of causes and effects of different phenomena. In this field, official statistics are also used to assess a government's policies.
One common point for all these users is their need to be able to trust the official information. They need to be confident that the results published are authoritative and unbiased. Producers of official statistics must maintain a reputation of professionalism and independence.
The statistical system must be free from interference that could influence decisions on the choice of sources, methods used for , the selection of results to be released as official, and the timing and form of . Statistical business processes should be transparent and follow international standards of good practice.
Statistical programs are decided on an annual or multi-annual basis by governments in many countries. They also provide a way to judge the performance of the statistical system.
Producers
Official statistics are collected and produced by national statistical institutes (NSIs) or (NSOs), depending on national administrations. They are responsible for producing and disseminating official statistical information, providing the highest quality data. The criteria for quality are: relevance and completeness, timeliness, accuracy, accessibility and clarity, cost efficiency, transparency, comparability and coherence, which are called quality principles. Their role is also to foster statistical literacy among important user groups and the general public.
The core tasks of NSOs, for both centralized and decentralized systems, are investing user needs and filtering these for . Then they transform the relevant user needs into measurable concepts to facilitate data collection and dissemination. This is part of the production process.
Statistical agencies also determine the resources necessary for the various activities and ensure relevance by keeping permanent networks with various representatives of different types of users. Moreover statistical producers have to anticipate user needs when producing new types of statistics in order to speed up the process. It can be called the "antenna function". Another way to assess the quality of their services is to undertake periodically .
Nevertheless, NSOs are usually not the only official and national institutes to produce official statistics. Central banks and some ministries or other central authorities may have statistical functions as well. Together, all producers of official statistics form the statistical system of a country. In some countries, especially those that have a federal structure, producers of official statistics exist also at regional or even municipal levels.
The NSO is in charge of the coordination between statistical producers and of ensuring the coherence and compliance of the statistical system to the principles. In countries with less than 25 million inhabitants, the NSO should also have the exclusive responsibility for all surveys and all business surveys for official statistics. This should improve efficiency and ensure .
The NSO has to pay particular attention to ensuring that the information materials, the terminology and the metadata of the statistical results disseminated are coherent and understandable for non-users especially in the case of diverging results compiled from different sources. The NSO also has to decide which ones are the official statistics. Moreover, it ensures the dissemination platforms for all official statistical from which contact information for is extracted. Finally, the NSO should support and advise other producers of official statistics and organize meetings with all of them.
The NSO has a major responsibility as its President/Director General represents the entire system of official statistics, both at the national and at international levels.
Statistical producers perform advocacy work on official statistics and can provide advice and services, such as training activities in order to broaden the know-how accumulated in the agency.
Production process
The usual production process of official statistics includes 6 steps:
- programming phase
- design phase
- data collection
- processing phase
- dissemination
- evaluation
- The programming phase starts the process with investigations into the information needs of users (topic of the information needed, its period, accuracy and ). A lot of information is gathered, and then filtered in order to focus on one specific activity. Official statistics can generate results that fulfil a great number of user needs and not only target a unique user group. Filtering allows selecting relevant information. These needs are translated into the best way of collecting data from .
- The is when tests and statistical surveys are designed or redesigned and tested. The first surveys are called . Tools and resources are also prepared to conduct the surveys and to implement them fully. This phase includes the definition of the results to be published as official.
- Data collection through statistical surveys can be done through different processes: by mail, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, internet, sample survey, sampling frame.
- The processing phase includes data entry, control, coding and editing. This phase is highly IT-dependent; CATI, Computer-assisted telephone interviewing and CAPI,Computer-assisted personal interviewing techniques are really useful in terms of speed. The results and the quality parameters have to be analysed carefully before passing to the next phase. This monitoring can be systematically done by tallying the same phenomenon with other sources at the .
- Dissemination is more than the mere release of the results and statistical products such as press releases, electronic dissemination on the Internet or hard-copy publication, to customers. It may include publications related to the topic with more details or analytical content, or may target specific user groups. It includes the generation of additional results for specific user requests such as statistical services. This means that consequently, microdata or the final sets of data have to be stored and well documented for a considerable period.
- An evaluation of the whole process is necessary to identify and make improvements in efficiency and quality of the process launched by the statistical producer; this helps for the next programming exercise.
Sometimes statistical producers can make but this is not recommended in the case of official statistics. The methodological information should be used in most of the surveys to obtain relevant results.
Another was developed by the Statistical Office of the European Communities, in 2003.
A proposal for a was submitted in 2007 by and the to a joint UNECE/Eurostat/OECD work session on statistical and is already used by several official statistical agencies even if it is still being developed.
The aim of the generic model is to provide a better basis for the production process, to make it more complete and detailed than the previous model.
Collection process
There are three main ways to collect data, by surveys, registers and censuses.
Statistical survey or sample survey
A statistical survey or a sample survey is an investigation about the characteristics of a phenomenon by means of collecting data from a sample of the population and estimating their characteristics through the systematic use of statistical methodology.
- The main advantage is the direct control over data content and the possibility to ask oriented questions. Another advantage is the rapidity of process and publication that is possible with computing techniques like CAPI or CATI.
- A disadvantage is the high cost and the variable quality of data collected when can cause biases or when respondents are not able or willing to give correct answers.
There are various survey methods that can be used such as direct interviewing, telephone, mail, online surveys.
The respondents of surveys can be called primary respondents that correspond to individual, households and companies.
Register
A register is a database that is updated continuously for a specific purpose and from which statistics can be collected and produced. It contains information on a complete group of units.
- An advantage is the total coverage even if collecting and processing represent low cost. It allows producing more detailed statistics than using surveys. Different registers can be combined and linked together on the basis of defined keys (personal identification codes, business identification codes, address codes etc.). Moreover, individual administrative registers are usually of high quality and very detailed.
- A disadvantage is the possible under-coverage that can be the case if the incentive or the cultural tradition of registering events and changes are weak, if the classification principles of the register are not clearly defined or if the classifications do not correspond to the needs of statistical production to be derived from them.
There are different types of registers:
? or records can help the NSI in collecting data. Using the existing administrative data for statistical production may be approved by the public because it can be seen as a cost efficient method; individuals and enterprises are less harassed by a response burden; is better as fewer people handle it and data have an electronic format.
?Private registers such as registers operated by insurance companies and employer organizations can also be used in the production process of official statistics, providing there is an agreement or legislation on this.
?Statistical registers are frequently based on combined data from different administrative registers or other data sources.
?For businesses, it is often legally indispensable to be registered in their country to a business register which is a system that makes business information collection easier.
?It is possible to find agricultural registers and registers of dwellings.
Census
Census is the complete enumeration of a population or groups at a point in time with respect to well-defined characteristics (population, production).
Censuses are not subject to an updating process contrary to registers. The information has to be collected at a reference period. The in order to have comparable information available. Therefore, most of the time a census is conducted every 5 or 10 years. The data is collected through that are either mailed to respondents or completed by an visiting respondents. It can also be done today by the Internet or by automated telephone interviewing.
- An advantage is for small areas or sub-units census may be the only information source on social, demographic or economic characteristics. Often, census results provide a basis for sampling frames used in forthcoming surveys.
- The major disadvantages of censuses are the usually high costs of their planning and implementation. Also, different understandings or interpretations of the terminology used in census questionnaires can be a problem.
In 2005, the adopted a resolution urging: "Member States to carry out a population and housing census and to disseminate census results as an essential source of information for small area, national, regional and international planning and development; and to provide census results to national stakeholders as well as the United Nations and other appropriate intergovernmental organizations to assist in studies on population, environment, and socio-economic development issues and programs".
Even though different types of data collection exist, the best estimates are based on a combination of different sources providing the strengths and reducing the weakness of each individual source.
Official Statistics presentation
Official statistics can be presented in different ways. Analytical texts and tables are the most traditional ways. Graphs and charts summarize data highlighting information content visually. They can be extremely effective in expressing key results, or illustrating a presentation. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Graphs and charts usually have a heading describing the topic.
There are different types of graphic but usually the data determine the type that is going to be used.
- To illustrate changes over time, a line graph would be recommended. This is usually used to display variables whose values represent a regular progression.
- For categorical data, it is better to use a bar graph either vertical or horizontal. They are often used to represent percentages and rates and also to compare countries, groups or illustrate changes over time. The same variable can be plotted against itself for two groups. An example of this is the age pyramid.
- Pie chart can be used to represent share of 100 per cent. Pie charts highlight the topic well only when there are few segments.
- Stacked bar charts, whether vertical or horizontal, are used to compare compositions across categories. They can be used to compare percentage composition and are most effective for categories that add up to 100 per cent, which make a full stacked bar chart. Their use is usually restricted to a small number of categories.
- Tables are a complement to related texts and support the analysis. They help to minimize numbers in the description and also eliminate the need to discuss small variables that are not essential. Tables rank data by order or other hierarchies to make the numbers easily understandable. They usually show the figures from the highest to the lowest.
- Another type of visual presentation of statistical information is thematic map. They can be used to illustrate differences or similarities between geographical areas, regions or countries. The most common statistical map that is used is called the choropleth map where different shades of a colour are used to highlight contrasts between regions; darker colour means a greater statistical value. This type of map is best used for data but for other data, proportional or graduated symbol maps, such as circles, are preferred. The size of the symbol increases in proportion to the value of the observed object.
Release
Official statistics are part of our everyday life. They are everywhere: in newspapers, on television and radio, in presentations and discussions. For most citizens, the media provide their only exposure to official statistics.
Television is the primary news source for citizens in industrialized countries, even if radio and newspapers still play an important role in the dissemination of statistical information. On the other hand newspapers and specialized economic and social magazines can provide more detailed coverage of statistical releases as the information on a specific theme can be quite extensive. Official statistics provides us with important information on the situation and the development trends in our society.
Users can gather information making use of the services of the National Statistical Offices. They can easily find it on the agency's website.
The development of computing technologies and the Internet has enabled users - businesses, educational institutions and households among others- to have access to statistical information. The Internet has become an important tool for statistical producers to disseminate their data and information. People are able to access information online. The supply of information from statistical agencies has increased. Today the advanced agencies provide the information on their websites in an understandable way, often categorized for different groups of users.
Several glossaries have been set up by different organizations or statistical offices to provide more information and definitions in the field of statistics and consequently official statistics.
Quality criteria to be respected
The quality criteria of a national statistical office are the following: relevance, impartiality, dissemination, independence, transparency, confidentiality, international standards. There principles apply not only to the NSO but to all producers of official statistics. Therefore, not every figure reported by a public body should be considered as official statistics, but those produced and disseminated according to the principles. Adherence to these principles will enhance the credibility of the NSO and other official statistical producers and build public trust in the reliability of the information and results that are produced.
Relevance
Relevance is the first and most important principles to be respected for national statistical offices. When releasing information, data and official statistics should be relevant in order to fulfil the needs of users as well as both public and private sector decision makers. Production of official statistics is relevant if it corresponds to different user needs like public, governments, businesses, research community, educational institutions, NGOs and international organizations or if it satisfies basic information in each area and citizen's right to information.
Impartiality
Once the survey has been made, the NSO checks the quality of the results and then they have to be disseminated no matter what impact they can have on some users, whether good or bad. All should accept the results released by the NSO as authoritative. Users need to perceive the results as unbiased representation of relevant aspects of the society. Moreover, the impartiality principle implies the fact that NSOs have to use understandable terminology for statistics' dissemination, questionnaires and material published so that everyone can have access to their information.
Dissemination
In order to maximize dissemination, statistics should be presented in a way that facilitates proper interpretation and meaningful comparisons. To reach the general public and non-expert users when disseminating, NSOs have to add explanatory comments to explain the significance of the results released and make analytical comments when necessary. There is a need to identify clearly what the preliminary, final and revised results are, in order to avoid confusion for users. All results of official statistics have to be publicly accessible. There are no results that should be characterized as official and for the exclusive use of the government. Moreover they should be disseminated simultaneously.
Independence
Users can be consulted by NSOs but the decisions should be made by statistical bodies. Information and activities of producers of official statistics should be independent of political control. Moreover, NSOs have to be free of any political interference that could influence their work and thus, the results. They should not make any political advice or policy-perspective comments on the results released at anytime, even at press conferences or in interviews with the media.
Transparency
The need for is essential for NSOs to gain the trust of the public. They have to expose to the public the methods they use to produce official statistics, and be accountable for all the decisions they take and the results they publish. Also, statistical producers should warn users of certain interpretations and false conclusions even if they try to be as precise as possible. Furthermore, the quality of the accurate and timely results must be assessed prior to release. But if errors in the results occur before or after the , they should be directly corrected and information should be disseminated to the users at the earliest possible time. Producers of official statistics have to set analytical systems in order to change or improve their activities and methods.
Confidentiality
All data collected by the national statistical office must protect the privacy of individual respondents, whether persons or businesses. But on the contrary, government units such as institutions cannot invoke statistical confidentiality. All respondents have to be informed about the purpose and legal basis of the survey and especially about the confidentiality measures. The statistical office should not release any information that could identify an individual or group without prior consent. After data collection, replies should go back directly to the statistical producer, without involving any intermediary. Data processing implies that filled-in paper and electronic form with full names should be destroyed.
International standards
The use of international standards at the national level aims to improve international comparability for national users and facilitate decision-making, especially when controversial. Moreover, the overall structure, including concepts and definitions, should follow internationally accepted standards, guidelines or good practices. International recommendations and standards for statistical methods approved by many countries provide them with a common basis like the two standards of the International Monetary Fund, , SDDS for Special Data Dissemination Standards and GDDS for General Data Dissemination System. Their aim is to guide countries in the dissemination of their economic and financial data to the public. One approved, these standards have to be observed by all producers of official statistics and not only by the NSO.
See also
Related topics
Lists
External links
Institutions and organizations
National Statistical Institutes for Official Statistics
International organizations
General information
Glossaries
Further reading
Giovanini, Enrico , OECD Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-92-64-03312-2
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