Statistical data editing

Users of statistical information are nowadays demanding high-quality data on social, demographic, industrial, economic, financial, political, and cultural aspects of society with a great level of detail and produced within a short span of time. National statistical institutes (NSIs) fulfill a central role in providing such high-quality statistical information. Most NSIs face this challenge while their financial budgets are constantly diminishing. A major complicating factor is that collected data generally contain errors. The data collection stage in particular is a potential source of errors. For instance, a respondent may give a wrong answer (intentionally or not), a respondent may not give an answer (either because he or she does not know the answer or because he or she does not want to answer), and errors can be introduced at the NSI when the data are transferred from the questionnaire to the computer system. The occurrence of errors in the observed data makes it necessary to carry out an extensive process of checking the collected data and, when necessary, of correcting them. This checking and correcting process is referred to as “statistical data editing.”