Survey Design

Survey design covers the definition of all aspects of a survey from the establishment of a need for data to the production of final outputs (the microdata file, statistical series, and analysis). The survey design addresses the following issues: what statistics are produced, for which population, when, and with what accuracy; what data are to be collected for which units of the population of interest, and what are the methods by which those data are to be collected and processed to produce the required statistics. Operational, organisational and administrative issues are usually addressed (Lessler, J.T. and Kalsbeek, W.D. (1992), "Non Sampling Error in Survey", New York: John Wiley or US department of Commerce (1978), "Glossary of Non Sampling Error Terms: An Illustration of a Semantic Problem in Statistics", Statistical Policy Working Paper 4, Office of Federal Statistical Policy Standards). OECD Source: Statistics Canada, "Statistics Canada Quality Guidelines", 4th edition, October 2003, page 8. NOTE: See ISI definition of sample design for a long list of qualifiers as the term tends to be used in several ways. Also see Spatial sampling designs above for one way of using the terms.