UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing Creating an Initial Donor Pool for New Questions in the Census of Agriculture Darcy Miller UNECE Work Session on Statistical Data Editing April 22-24, 2016

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Agency in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Mission: “The National Agricultural Statistics Service provides timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. Agriculture.” Hundreds of survey reports Census of Agriculture 5 years

Census of Agriculture Only comprehensive agriculture data for every state and county in the U.S. Questionnaire length is typically 24 pages List frame has ~ 3 million records Leading source of information on characteristics of people operating farms Changes in farm structure and demographics of farm operators inform USDA farm program assessments

Census of Agriculture Edit & Imputation Methodology Edit logic Written by subject-matter experts Applied by “module” Identifies inconsistency and chooses from a hierarchy of imputation strategies Imputation strategies Deterministic Previously reported data Pre-assembled for Census of Agriculture Nearest neighbor donor

Census of Agriculture Donor Pool Developing initial donor pool Mixture of previous census and preliminary census content test data Updating donor pool Records that pass all edits are added to the donor pool Early in the process, more recently added donors favored Donor data are maintained by “module” Donors are stratified Farm Type, Farm Size and Income, etc. Varies by “module”

Panel on Women and New/Beginning Farmers 13 experts from academia, government and private organizations met in April 2015 Focus on collecting data to better understand the role of women and new/beginning farmers on agricultural surveys Evaluate what is currently measured Provide guidance on how to improve reporting

Comparison of the 2012 and 2017 Census of Agriculture Demographics Sections

2017 Census of Agriculture Additional Questions (Decision Matrix)

Donor Pool Decision Matrix Data are new and unique to NASS Content test data are available Developing initial donor pool Decision matrix forms its own “module” Impute content test decision matrix data using model based method Fully processed content test data used as initial donor pool Updating donor pool Same method as other “modules” Imputing this “module” for 2017 Census records

Initial Donor Pool Decision Matrix Use IVEware to impute decision matrix IVEware implements Sequential Regression Multiple Imputation (SRMI) (Raghunathan et al., 2001) Requires models and integration of off-the-shelf product into a tailored process Subject matter experts IVEware/SRMI experts Information technology experts

Moving Forward Communication Teamwork NASS has structure in place for each census cycle Early and often Common language between disciplines Information technology Statistics Methodologists Teamwork