1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

5. 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

6. 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”

7. 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

8. Comparison of the 2012 and 2017 Census of Agriculture Demographics Sections

9. 2017 Census of Agriculture Additional Questions (Decision Matrix)

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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