Jeffrey Hoogland
Statistics Netherlands
Prinses Beatrixlaan 428
2273 XZ Voorburg
The Netherlands
jhgd@cbs.nl
In 2001 a new uniform system for the annual structural business statistics was implemented. An important part of the new system is the editing process, which makes use of selective editing. Four score functions are used to select questionnaires that contribute most to publication aggregates or that have an unexpected small influence on publication totals. Three other score functions are used to select questionnaires that are likely to contain large errors. The philosophy behind these score functions will be explained in detail.
The seven score functions are combined to one plausibility indicator (PI). When a form has a low score on this indicator the form is likely to contain influential errors. This form is therefore checked by a person and, if necessary, corrected. Forms with a large value for the PI are edited automatically with the software package SLICE, which has been developed at the Methods and Informatics department of Statistics Netherlands. If SLICE signals a violation of edit rules then regression imputation is used to alter values of variables.
At this moment the records for the annual structural business statistics of 2000 are edited. Information from clean data of 1999, like medians and publication aggregates are used to evaluate the plausibility of raw records of 2000. Also, clean data from 2000 from other sources are used, like short-term statistics and tax information. For a number of publication cells all records that have been edited automatically are also edited by a statistical analyst to evaluate the performance of the score functions and SLICE.