Managing perceived response
burden: why and how
Deirdre Giesen & Barbara Berkenbosch
Actual and perceived response burden
– Actual response burden: time and/or money spent on
complying with statistical data requests
– Perceived response burden: subjective evaluation of
effort spent . E.g.
‐ Did you find it quick or time consuming?
‐ Did you find it easy or difficult?
See also Dale & Haraldsen (2007) ‘Handbook for
monitoring and evaluating business survey response
burdens’.
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Outline
– Findings BLUE-ETS project: demonstrating need for
management of perceived burden
– Example of “Perception of Burden” project at Statistics
Netherlands
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Acknowledgements
BLUE-ETS work
CBS Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres van Grinsven, Ger Snijkers et al.
University of Ljubljana: Mojca Bavdaž, Irena Bolko et al.
SSB Gustav Haraldsen, Øyvin Kleven, Tora Löfgren, Dag Gravem et al.
SCB Boris Lorenc, Andreas Persson et al.
SORS Rudi Seljak et al.
University of Bergamo Sylvia Biffignandi
Perception of Burden Project
Barbara Berkenbosch, Daisy Debie, Lex Visser, Matthijs Jacobs ,Vronie de
Haan, Jos van den Heuvel, Max Storms, Deirdre Giesen, Vanessa Torres
van Grinsven , Ger Snijkers et al.
BLUE-ETS research on burden and motivation
Measurement and reduction of
response burden in official business
surveys NSIs practice
Businesses’ perspectives on official
statistics
Case studies
Analyses of data on burden and
response behaviour in Sweden,
Norway and Netherlands
Studies on effects of actions to
reduce burden and/or increase
motivation: Experiments on
improving motivation in Sweden and
Slovenia, studies on effects of
questionnaire design in Norway and
The Netherlands
BLUE-Enterprise and Trade Statistics project ( April 2010-March 2013)
EU FP7 project
See www.blue-ets.eu for all reports
Slovenian experiment (Bavdaž & Bolko 2013)
Results BLUE-ETS case studies 1
• Response burden related to response behaviour, e.g.
more burden: lower and later response, more edits
needed
• Perceived burden related to actual burden but also to
perception of NSI and usefulness statistics
Results BLUE-ETS case studies 2
• Experiments aiming at increasing motivation by better
communication did not show many of the expected
effects
• The two questionnaire studies showed that
questionnaire redesign can reduce actual and perceived
burden
Perception of Burden Project at SN
– Ran from February 2012-August 2013
– Part of government policy to reduce burden caused by
statistics
– Main goal: further intensify and coordinate actions to
reduce perceived burden (projects aimed at reducing
actual burden ran in parallel)
– Main goal: improve businesses’ and business
organisations perceptions of response burden created by
SN surveys
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Assess needs by
– Brainstorming workshop with representatives from
various parts of bureau to 1) make inventory of current
knowledge and initiatives and 2) prioritise actions
needed to reduce business respondents’ irritiations
about our survyes.
– Additional research: telephone survey of SMEs in our
samples, re-analyses of data customer satisfaction
survey, analyses of sentiments regarding SN in social
media
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Actions taken
– Improvement of letters
– Show case approach: collaboration with businesses and
business organisations in redesign of survey
– Reduction of helpdesk waiting times
– Improvement of service call center
– Improvement of website
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Plans for the future
– Use ‘show case approach’ for future redesign projects
– Develop permanent monitoring of perceived response
burden
– Redesign questionnaire systems to imporve uniformity
and user friendliness of our questionnaires and to enable
the production of survey calendars
– Further professionalize our complaint handling
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Thank you for your attention…
… and please have a look at all BLUE-ETS deliverables at
www.blue-ets.eu!
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