Chapter 12 Final words

There are two important lessons to be drawn from this course:

  • Sample surveys are now a key source of data in many different fields, including Economics and Finance. Unlike macroeconomic sources, sample surveys collect micro-data that provide distributional indicators, such as measures of income or wealth inequality.
  • Sample surveys are a serious business that must be carried out properly and according to scientific guidelines in order to obtain high quality and reliable statistics.

Although they are an essential tool for obtaining relevant statistical information, sample surveys are now facing major challenges:

  • The steady decline in survey participation, which poses a serious threat to the representativeness of the sample and to the overall quality of the survey results. There are many reasons for higher non-response, such as the increasing number of surveys, not only by national statistical institutes, but also by private organisations, universities, research centres, etc., and their lack of coordination. There is also growing public concern about data protection and the way personal data is treated. People are also more mobile and therefore harder to track. This is particularly true in a country like Luxembourg, where half of the resident population is made up of foreigners.

  • The need to provide statistical indicators more and more quickly (timeliness), which implies the development of data production chains and a growing need for IT skills among staff.

  • The integration of new data sources. For example, administrative databases can provide a lot of accurate information on household income, which can be used as an alternative to income data collected through sample surveys. “Big data sources (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are also of growing interest to data users, although there are important methodological issues regarding their quality, representativeness and accessibility.

  • The use of new digital tools for data collection, such as web-based surveys, mobile applications, smart meters, smart cards, etc. Digital tools offer interesting solutions to facilitate data collection, reduce survey burden and reduce errors, but they are not easily accessible to everyone in a population (see e.g. the ‘digital divide’ between the young and the elderly).

However, the rise of digitisation does not mean that sample surveys are doomed. There are many topics (e.g. subjective questions) that are not covered by “big data” sources and for which survey data are still relevant. However, the future of statistics should probably move towards a greater combination of data sources and a greater mix of data collection modes (telephone, web, face-to-face, etc.).