1. How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
A new statistical register linked to the French BR
Sept.2011

2. Description of the French administrative BR
SIRENE
A national business register in which all businesses and their local units are registered : exhaustiveness (and more)
Since 1994 : a unique identification number, at the core of the inter-administrative system
2011 : 8 million businesses and 9 million local units
Content of SIRENE
Identification data, address of local units, code identifying the principal business activity carried out
Drawbacks of this administrative aspect
Restricted to the legal units
“You can’t do what you want” : the updating of SIRENE (for business statistics) comes up against its twofold role (administrative and statistical)
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

3. A complete overhaul of the annual business statistics
2005 : France launched RESANE, a “collection” of projects to overhaul its structural business statistics
Three main purposes of this programme :
to reduce the response burden on businesses
to improve productivity
=> first results produced on 2009
to improve the quality of the business' statistics by taking into account group structures
To achieve this 3rd objective, two projects in progress :
“Profiling process”
“Statistical Business Register”
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

4. A few words about the Profiling process
Distribution of the entreprises
Size of the groups (number of employees)
So-called « profiled enterprises »
Large groups
(about 100)
« Medium sized » groups
(about 1 600)
Small groups
(about )
>10 000
>=500 et =<
< 500
Legal units which are not in a group
(one enterprise = one legal unit)
So-called « non profiled enterprises »
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

5. Statistical Business Register Statistical units, data and links 1/2
A new register to record all these units : SIRUS (for “Systeme d’Identification au Répertoire des Unités Statistiques”)
Enterprises (profiled and stand-alone legal units)
Their local units
Groups
Legal units and their “production units”
All the links between these statistical units (relationship between different types of statistical units and ownership rates)
“Corporate networks”/ franchise
“Usual” and new data :
Institutional sector, legal form, main activity, size
Categories of business (Art. 51 of the law on the modernisation of the economy) for the purpose of statistical & economic analysis, using number of employees, turnover and balance sheet total
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

6. Statistical Business Register Statistical units, data and links 2/2
UL 1
UL 10
UL 4
UL 9
UL 3
UL 8
UL 7
UL 2
UL 6
UL 5 E6
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

7. Statistical Business Register A new way of recording and updating data
More sources to update this statistical register :
more “statistical” updates (infra-annual surveys)
more automatized updates (since it guarantees coherent data)
=> all the possible updates have been classified, structured, in order to solve inconsistencies between several sources
Metadata
All data are dated
All treatments are dated
All sources of update are recorded
Definition of “reference populations”, of basis for sampling
To improve “coherence”, more communication to inform all survey managers that a data has been changed, an activity code updated, a unit ceased : the one and the same value for a specific day
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

8. To record the statistical burden
Review :
A unit can be included in several sampling frames (French NSI, Ministerial statistical departments)
No centralization of samples (no quick and cheap means of ascertaining how many questionnaires an enterprise has been sent)
Samples
Survey managers
Basis for sampling
SIRUS
With SIRUS :
Recording of all the samples of all Business Surveys
Building of a « background » of samples (in order to measure the past statistical burden)
Link with the Conseil National de l’Information Statistique (CNIS) to get the programme which sets out the surveys for the coming year
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

9. To record the response burden
Time needed by the businesses to fill in the questionnaire :
Some surveys measure this time :
2009 : measurement introduced in the annual business survey (declarative measurement)
systematically during the test phases (concerning a few dozen questionnaires)
step of the framework of the ministerial modernisation process (measurement and reduction of the administrative burden) : from January 2012, this measurement has to be extended to every survey
No response ? SIRUS records the fact that the questionnaire has been filled (or not, and the reason)
Both information :
A business has been sampled n times during the past year
A business spent n hours on filling statistical questionnaires
Data available for each kind of units (local units, enterprises, groups) but the most interesting : the burden on enterprises
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

10. To reduce the response burden
To sample enterprises and no longer legal units – when possible
To know how many questionnaires have been sent to a “profiled” enterprise will allow us to measure the costs / time savings when only one questionnaire can be sent
To improve “negative co-ordination” (= to reduce the overlap between samples for different surveys)
Used to share the response burden among responding units (when statistics are not correlated)
Nowadays : two-by-two coordination of samples
But a method (Chr. Hesse – Jales+) based on the survey burden is being tested with a view to developing it into a software package
How to record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Sept.2011

11. Thank you for your attention
How shall INSEE record samples in order to make respondent burden feasible
Thank you for your attention
Insee
18 bd Adolphe-Pinard
75675 Paris Cedex 14
Informations statistiques :
/ Contacter l’Insee
(coût d’un appel local)
du lundi au vendredi de 9h00 à 17h00
Contact
Mrs Anne HUSSEINI-SKALITZ.
Tél. : 33.(0)
Courriel :