Respondent Load Strategy

Surveying across government

The high-level picture of surveying across the Official Statistics System (provided by the Survey Notification System² as at 30 September 2007) is that there have been 448 surveys from government departments and Crown agencies. Of these surveys:

• 239 were surveys of individuals and 209 were surveys of businesses
• Statistics NZ conducted the largest number of surveys, both of individuals (20) and businesses (130)
• Statistics NZ conducted by far the greatest proportion of business surveys (62 percent), but conducted only 8 percent of individual surveys.

Of other government agencies, Tourism New Zealand conducts the largest number of individual surveys (24), and the Ministry of Economic Development conducts the most business surveys (14).

^{(2) The surveys registered in the Survey Notification system include many discontinued or duplicate collections (for example new entries for different years) that contain information that is not of good enough quality to provide a snapshot of current survey activity.}

Respondent load from Statistics NZ surveys

The following graph shows the aggregate time taken to complete Statistics NZ surveys from 2002–06 and the projected time taken to 2012.

Figure 1

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Business surveys

In a small economy where some businesses dominate their industries, or there are a small number of large players, it is inevitable that some businesses will be relatively heavily burdened by Statistics NZ if high quality statistics are to be provided.

Figure 2 shows that between 2003 and 2006 the number of businesses eligible to be surveyed increased, while the number of businesses that actually received one or more surveys decreased (44 percent of those surveyed in 2003, 31 percent in 2006). The use of administrative data to reduce the number of small businesses (five or less employees) included in survey samples was a major contributor to the decrease.

The graph does not show the breakdown between the different sizes of businesses as the data is dominated by small businesses (in 2006 approximately 67 percent of surveyed businesses were small). The number of medium-sized businesses (six to 19 employees) surveyed has also dropped but not to the same extent as for small businesses. The number of large businesses (20 or more employees) being surveyed has increased, although the percentage surveyed has decreased.

While since 2003, the number of businesses that we survey has decreased significantly (down 20.6 percent), the total time spent answering questionnaires (figure 3) has decreased only slightly (0.9 percent). This is because it has tended to be for shorter surveys that the samples have reduced, and this has been offset by the introduction of some longer and more complex questionnaires.

Business surveying by Statistics NZ

Figures 2 and 3 show how many businesses were surveyed by Statistics NZ (in 2002–06 and projected to 2012) and the total time taken by businesses to complete these surveys.³

Figure 2

Figure 3

^{(3) The years 2002, 2007 and 2012 are part of the five-yearly cycle of the Agriculture Production Census, when between 40,00 and 50,00 additional businesses are surveyed.}

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Table 2

Table 3

Social surveys

In the social survey area, the number of surveys conducted by Statistics NZ will increase over the next 10 years. This increase is due to the implementation of the Programme of Official Social Statistics, which was developed to address fragmentation, duplication and sustainability of social surveying across government.

From 2005/06 to 2015/16, the programme will establish a more coherent system of official social statistics and provide opportunities to meet a range of information needs that may have otherwise been met though ad hoc or one-off surveys.

The programme will enable us to lower load even further in the longer term by moving to more integration of social surveys. To achieve this vision, all household surveys will ask a set of core questions and then ask additional topic-specific questions (depending on the survey).

Figure 4 shows that the total load placed on households and individuals has steadily increased since 2002, when it was 13,300 hours, and is set to peak in 2009 at 40,100 hours. The number of eligible responding individuals spiked in 2006 when the Disability Survey was undertaken, with over 30,000 individuals responding to the survey. The same increase is projected for 2011 when this survey is undertaken again in conjunction with new surveys.

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Household and individual surveying by Statistics New Zealand

Figure 4

In 2002, we conducted the Survey of Family Income and Employment Dynamics (SoFIE) and the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) including its Annual Income Survey supplement.

By 2006, the following additional surveys were undertaken:

• Household Economic Survey (HES) in 2003
• Longitudinal Immigration Survey of New Zealand (LISNZ) in 2005
• Disability Survey in 2006 (held every five years)
• Household ICT Survey (HLFS supplement in December 2006 quarter)
• Dynamics and Motivation for Migration Survey (DAMM) (HLFS supplement in March 2007 quarter).

Projected social load

The General Social Survey (GSS) will be undertaken in April 2008, followed by the Time Use Survey in October 2008 and the Family Survey in April 2009.

The projected reduction in load in 2010 is because of the completion of the Family Survey and the Time Use Survey in September 2009, the LISNZ survey in November 2009 and the SoFIE survey in September 2010. This reduction is partly offset by plans for an additional survey (topic not yet specified, the placeholder is known as the Special Survey) to be run between July and September 2010.

Between 2010 and 2011, the total load is projected to increase only slightly from 32,600 hours to 33,100 hours, whilst the number of eligible responding individuals is projected to increase significantly from 82,400 to 119,800.

In 2011, some short post-censual surveys are being conducted, including the:

• Māori Survey (July to October 2011)
• Post-enumeration Survey (April to June 2011)
• Household Savings Survey (October 2011 to December 2011)
• Disability Survey (July 2011 to September 2011).

This is mostly offset by reductions in load for the following surveys:

• GSS – only three months in 2011 (nine months in 2010)
• HES – reverts back to a non-diary year in 2011
• SoFIE – ends in 2010.

The significant increase in the number of eligible respondents in 2011 is mainly due to the large number of individuals who will be surveyed in the following surveys:

• Disability Survey (32,000 individuals)
• Post-enumeration Survey (10,000 households with 20,000 individuals) – the expected average time taken to complete a household interview is only 10 minutes.

Possible (but as yet unconfirmed) surveys that have been excluded from the projections include:

• a new SoFIE sample (with eight waves) after 2010
• a fourth wave for the LISNZ sample being introduced around 2009/10 (or a new LISNZ sample)
• a Housing Survey.

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Table 4

^{(1) Time taken does not include completion of the diary itself, as this information has not been collected.
(2) The lower value in wave 2 is due to dependent data collected during wave 1 that only needs to be reconfirmed in subsequent interviews.}

Table 5

^{(1) The exact timing of some of these surveys may change from that stated once the work programme is finalised.}