An Analysis of the Mixed Collection Modes for two Business Surveys Conducted by the US Census Bureau

Abstract

In the past decade, offering multiple modes of data collection has become increasingly popular. However, the benefits of offering multiple modes should not come at the cost of data quality. Using historic data from two federal business surveys, we investigate data quality as a function of mode of data collection using various quality measures, including the unit response rate (the unweighted proportion of responding reporting units) and the quantity response rate (the weighted proportion of an estimate obtained from reported data).