European Statistical System Research Articles

Measuring Data Quality from Building Registers: A Case Study in Italy

Geographic data quality is a complex issue requiring continuous operational improvements. Considering this to be one of the most topical research and technical issues in official statistics and environmental monitoring, this study re-connects the operational dimension of ‘geographic data quality’ with the broader issue of monitoring the quality of official statistics. By estimating the accuracy of public (spatially explicit) data, this study illustrates an operational framework with an exploratory exercise in estimating the geographic data quality characteristic of a specific information source within the official statistical system (i.e., building registry) in a given European country, namely, Italy. The results of this exercise provide a paradigmatic example of profound innovation in the activities of statistical services in Europe and specifically the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat), transitioning from independent (and poorly connected) field surveys to an integrated system of registries. Since several studies are based on spatially explicit survey units, it is essential to estimate the quality of geographical data, especially those derived from information sources where space is topical information, such as (local, regional, or national) building registers. Thanks to the results of an empirical exercise applied to Italian building registers, the present article will discuss the issue of data accuracy, considered the main issue related to monitoring geographic data quality, from an official statistics’ perspective. Statistical indicators will be proposed for the assessment of systematic and random errors of spatially explicit measures, possibly enabling a quali-quantitative improvement in the semantic content of building registers that address the inherent requirements of official statistics. Such indicators have some positive implications for the entire system of official statistics in Italy and, for generalization, within the European Statistical System.

Selective editing for asymmetry analysis in intra-EU trade Micro-Data Exchange (MDE)

Since January 2022, the Regulation on European Business Statistics (EU 2019/2152) requires EU Member States to compulsorily share microdata on intra-EU exports. Establishing intra-EU export Micro-Data Exchange (MDE) provides National Statistical Institutes with a new data source to compile intra-EU import statistics. The availability of MDE tackles two key challenges: diminishing the overall response burden on data providers and meeting user expectations regarding the quality of the produced statistics. However, transitioning to a data production system based on MDE data requires the assessment of the coherence and comparability between MDE and National import data. To identify asymmetries between the two data sources, Istat developed an innovative application designed to foster cooperation among Member States. The tool was developed using the Shiny package in R. The implemented solution allows users to perform exploratory analysis, systematic error detection, and selective editing. The most relevant asymmetries are identified through relative contribution and the asymmetry suspicion indices assessed by user-defined thresholds. Sharing the open tool within the European Statistical System enhances interoperability, promotes method harmonization, and encourages the adoption of official statistical standards.

Formation And Implementation Of Digital Transformation The Companies: A Conceptual Aspect

The concept of formation and implementation of digital transformation for the development of the company is considered. The article analyzes the digital transformation of a company as a process by which digital technologies are introduced into the digital economy and business to achieve fundamental changes. It has been found that the digital transformation of a company during its formation leads to changes in three areas: customer service quality, operational processes, and business models. At the same time, the digital transformation process requires coordination across the organization and involves a change in business culture. The author outlines approaches to the company’s work that can improve the quality of customer service, stimulate employee innovation, and drive the company’s growth at a fundamental level. At the same time, the most important task of the company’s CEO is to stimulate digital transformation at all levels of the company: in processes and procedures; organizational structures; development of digital marketing and sales; offering digital services and digital business models, etc. The need to support an innovative culture that focuses on what new digital technologies should be introduced and how best to integrate them into everyday life is emphasized. At the same time, the software will help companies implement digital innovation strategies. The following stages are recommended for implementing digital transformation in a company: business transformation; developing own strategy and organizational changes; breaking down barriers to change; developing own partner ecosystem; using a flexible approach; and financing. It is determined that digital technologies, as the basis of digital business, have been integrated with business and have become more than just hardware or software. As digital technologies become more pervasive and companies move further along the path of digital transformation, digital strategy and business strategy will converge. All of this requires a change in the company’s business culture. It is proposed that in the formation and implementation of digital transformation, the possibility of integration into the European Statistical System (ESS) should be considered as a means of increasing the visibility of digital transformation.

Streamlining the regionalization of economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA): The case of swiss cantons

Current levels of resource use and pollution emissions are responsible for the trespassing of most planetary boundaries. As such, operational and contextual analysis is needed to provide mitigation strategies and policies. This article aims to streamline Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) at a Swiss cantonal scale, which corresponds to NUTS 3 region according to the European Statistical System. The method was developed originally to be applied at a national level. However, it can be considered as a “black-box” approach, which measures flows rather than enabling the understanding of the internal mechanisms that mobilise them. In order to overcome this challenge, the accounting was regionalized to smaller spatial units. This research developed an EW-MFA database for all 26 Swiss cantons for a time series from 2016 to 2019, including Domestic Extraction, Import, Export, and Domestic Processed Output parts. Results enable an in-depth look into Swiss material flows helping cantons to monitor their environmental pressures and develop more ambitious policies to keep their climate objectives.

Trusted Smart Statistics and the need for new ethical principles

The changing environment in a datafied society pushes the statistical world into a long-distance race where the final line is never reached because the path is continuously moving along the way. Many countries all over the world are searching for new approaches, new tools, skills and new possible roles for the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs). Horizontal issues are essential to address properly these changes. The first one is the access to Big Data (including Internet of Things – IoT) and the legislative framework and ethical principles related to such access. The second one is to communicate these principles to the citizens and to inform about the statistical treatment of the data from these new sources. The pandemic situation has increased even more the use of these data and opened questions on their uses. Some members of the European Statistical System (ESS) have already elaborated different ethical codes and even ethical assessment tools, which could be overlapped or/and complement the European Statistics Code of practice (ESCP). In parallel, under different projects and groups in the ESS and in the European Commission (related with the EU Data Strategy) some principles have been proposed along with recommendations, some fall under ethical behaviour. The European Statistics Code of Practice has just been updated in 2017, however, this changing environment is demanding new rules and principles that could be incorporated in the Code or even in an amended Regulation 223/2009 on European Statistics. In this paper we analyse the existing ethical principles for Big Data uses (in a broad sense) and under different scenarios and compare them with the current statistical principles. We will try to go even further and think into the future about what kind of principles we would need if we add new roles to the NSIs.

How to measure multidimensional quality of life of persons with disabilities in public policies - a case of Poland

BackgroundThe aim of this paper is to construct a tool that can be used to measure multidimensional quality of life of persons with disabilities in comparison with population without disabilities for the purpose of monitoring of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in Poland.MethodsThe Sen’s capability approach was applied to conceptualize the quality of life in various life domains. We followed guidelines of The Quality of Life Framework developed within the European Statistical System on choosing the life domains in which the QoL should be measured. The QoL scores in each domain (covered by the UNCRPD) were constructed using multiply indicators and multiple causes model (MIMIC). All analysis were based on 2018 EU-SILC data for Poland. We constructed quality of life indicators for population with and without disabilities and compared the differences.ResultsPersons without disability experienced higher QoL as compared to population with disabilities, overall and in various domains. Lower average QoL of persons with disabilities is a result of a lower share of those who experience high QoL. The biggest difference is observed for health and for productive and main activity domains. For material conditions and economic security and physical safety there was a moderate difference recorded. For the leisure and social relations domain there is almost no difference observed. Additionally, we identified diversified associations between such factors as age, gender, household situation, education, partner status, urbanization, health on the QoL across domains and analysed populations.ConclusionsA tool developed in this paper can be calibrated to enable cross-country and in time comparisons between different populations and support evidenced-based social policy.

Innovation in the European Statistical System: Recent achievements and challenges ahead

The National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) of the European Statistical System (ESS) have constantly strived to innovate products, processes and methods. Recent developments in the past decade have shown how rapidly data ecosystems are evolving across our globalised and digitalised societies. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 represented a turning point for innovation in the ESS. The speed of change spiked: those NSIs that had established a solid ground for innovation managed to continue providing high quality statistics to society and policymakers, while exploiting the potential for innovation given by the availability of new data sources. Despite the pandemic slowly losing its grip, Europe has found itself in the middle of a new crisis with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Therefore, NSIs now face the challenge of keeping up the innovative work and rolling out these innovations into production. This paper provides an overview of the work on innovation done at the ESS level in recent years and its contribution to the resilience of the statistical system to respond to recent crises. Furthermore, taking stock of recent experiences, it presents some of the main challenges and enablers which are needed to sustain ESS innovation in the years to come.

Adherence to endocrine therapy in women with breast cancer: development and preliminary validation of the A-BET questionnaire.

To develop an Italian tool that measures the therapy adherence of women with breast cancer undergoing treatment with oral endocrine therapy. A two-phase study was conducted, which followed the guidelines of the European Statistical System for the development and validation of a questionnaire. In the first phase, the questionnaire was developed; in the second phase, a preliminary validation was carried out on patients with breast cancer undergoing treatment with oral hormonal therapies. In its final version, the questionnaire presents 6 main items which aim to investigate the level of adherence, the degree of awareness of the nature of the drug taken and the reasons that may influence non-adherence. 82 patients were recruited in the validation study, with an average age of 56.4 years, while for the re-test 40 were selected with an average age of 57.3 years. Content validity reported excellent results. Cronbach's alpha of each item showed a strong degree of correlation. The creation of a tool for measuring adherence to endocrine therapy in breast cancer patients can be a valuable support for healthcare professionals involved in their care. Future studies should be aimed at using A-BET (Adherence - Breast Endocrine Therapy) on larger cohorts of patients in order to verify its validity / reliability more accurately and to be able to generalize the results.

СТАТИСТИКА ОСВІТИ УКРАЇНИ В КОНТЕКСТІ ЄВРОІНТЕГРАЦІЇ

The paper examines the current state of harmonization of state statistical activity with the requirements of the European Statistical System. The purpose of the article is to determine the state of integration of the education statistics system of Ukraine into the European Union to ensure comparability of education data at the international level. The research was carried out on the basis of general scientific methods such as analysis and synthesis, comparison, time-series analysis, structural analysis, graphical method, etc. The legal framework for the implementation of obligations in the field of statistics and information exchange between Ukraine and the European Union was analyzed. The Law of Ukraine on amendments to certain laws of Ukraine related to the activity of state statistics was reviewed with regard to amendments to the Law of Ukraine "On Education". The main aspects and processes of education systems at the global level were outlined. Special attention is given to creating the necessary conditions for international comparability of education data and indicators. The International Standard Classification of Education is described to provide internationally comparable statistics. The compliance of coverage of relevant age groups by educational programs of Ukraine with international standards was analyzed. Student enrolment has been studied in comparison with European Union member and candidate countries. It was noted that Ukraine had completed a significant amount of work on the commitments towards European integration, despite the emergency situation in Ukraine as a result of the attack by the russian federation. The article draws conclusions about the state of integration of the system of education statistics of Ukraine into the European Union. The task of integrating the system of education statistics of Ukraine into the European space can be carried out effectively only on the condition of consensus, systematic, and compre­hensive consideration.

A first interim assessment of the third round of peer review of the European statistical system

A first interim assessment of the third round of peer review of the European statistical system

Patient-centered infertility questionnaire for female clients (PCIQ-F): part I: questionnaire development

BackgroundPatient-centered care is an essential component of health care quality. To achieve patient-centered care, health care authorities should have a clear definition and an applicable tool to measure the extent of its application. The real concept of patient centeredness should be developed by the patients themselves. We aimed to demonstrate a way to develop a draft Arabic patient-centered infertility care (PCIC) questionnaire for females clients following practical steps that address women with infertility.MethodsAn iterative process of questionnaire development was undertaken by combining two approaches: the steps proposed by Robert F. DeVellis for scale development and the recommended practices for questionnaire development and testing in the European statistical system. We attempted to develop the draft questionnaire that involved conceptualization and operationalization, generation of an item pool, development of the questionnaire format, review of the initial item pool by experts, and consideration of validation items for inclusion.ResultsWe generated an item pool from in-depth interviews with 14 women who sought infertility care within 6 months before the interview time. We then added more items from a literature review. The item pool contained 123 items distributed through 10 domains. Ten women with infertility were included for face validation. Then, experts with backgrounds in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Family Medicine, and Public Health reviewed the item pool using content validation (n = 10 professors and/or specialists). The item pool was finally reduced to 57 items. We developed the draft Arabic patient-centered infertility care questionnaire for female clients (PCIQ-F) with three sections, including 66 items: background variables, PCIC experience variables, and a general question about the quality of infertility care in the health facility. The draft questionnaire was further reviewed and edited last by experts in preparation for part 2, which will test the questionnaire and prepare the final version.ConclusionThe PCIQ-F questionnaire development is a multi-step iterative process started and ended by the target users as experts. Experts’ participation in infertility care and in questionnaire format development had a great impact on questionnaire development and conflict resolution. We recommend this transparent and replicable approach for new instrument developers; it is likely to generate a questionnaire that is valid and acceptable to target users. The draft PCIQ-F questionnaire is ready for testing of its psychometric properties before the final version to measure the PCIC level in health facilities.

Education in official statistics: A common challenge of providers of official statistics and universities

In the fast-changing environment, the amount of available data is exploding and transforming it quickly into actionable information is not easy. Thus, reliable and comparable statistics are in increasingly high demand by the public, even more so in troubled times such as financial crisis and pandemics. However, crisis is also an exciting opportunity to tap into the interest of young people and harness their talent for working with official statistics. Two initiatives at the European level are already in place to advance education in official statistics. As production environment started to change with increasingly rapid evolution of technologies and new data sources, Eurostat together with the European Statistical System (ESS) brought to life European Statistical Training Programme (ESTP) and European Master in Official Statistics (EMOS). This papers briefly describes the origin and the main characteristics of both models of training, the bridges that they build, and discusses the way ahead.

Towards a modular end-to-end statistical production process with mobile network data

Mobile network data has proved to be an outstanding data source for the production of statistics in general, and for Official Statistics, in particular. Similarly to another new digital data sources, this poses the remarkable challenge of refurbishing a new statistical production process. In the context of the European Statistical System (ESS), we substantiate the so-called ESS Reference Methodological Framework for Mobile Network Data with a first modular and evolvable proposed statistical process comprising (i) the geolocation of mobile devices, (ii) the deduplication of mobile devices, (iii) the statistical filtering to identify the target population, (iv) the aggregation into territorial units, and (v) the inference to the target population. The proposal is illustrated with synthetic data generated from a network event data simulator developed for these purposes.

Environmental security in rural areas near the Ukrainian-Polish border: comparative analysis

A comparative analysis of the ecological safety of rural areas of the Ukrainian-Polish border was conducted. The main statistical indicators characterizing the natural environment on both sides of the Ukrainian-Polish border have been studied. The possibility of using indicators of the state of ecology of rural areas used for statistical purposes in Ukraine and Poland has been studied. The degree of implementation of the provisions of the “Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one hand, and the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, on the other hand” on the unification of statistics was analyzed and found to be incomplete. Indicators used for statistics in Poland (EU) and Ukraine differ significantly, which greatly prevents a full comparison of the environment and living conditions, which a priori determine the quality of life, its duration, the health of residents on both sides of the border. This situation complicates the planning of joint Ukrainian-Polish activities in all areas covered by the concept of “environmental security in the cross-border area”. It was emphasized that Ukraine has undertaken to harmonize the Ukrainian statistical system with the European Statistical System, as well as to support the introduction of a common quality management system in all processes of production and distribution of statistical products, but this activity is very slow. It is revealed that due to this situation the cooperation between the parties within the European Statistical System, namely Eurostat as the EU statistical body, in the field of environmental statistics remains low. It is proved that the presence of a large number of border crossings in border areas are additional (compared to other local areas) centers of agricultural soil pollution: increasing air emissions and solid waste, consuming more water, respectively, increases the amount of wastewater and the load on treatment plants. At the same time, there is a constant threat of transboundary pollution and accidents of water supply systems, and consequently, the release of emissions of varying degrees of danger into water and soil. The need to conduct further research to study the structure of agricultural production of the Ukrainian-Polish borderland with an emphasis on organic production and consumption was noted.

Towards a methodological framework for estimating present population density from mobile network operator data

The concept of present population is gaining increasing attention in official statistics. One possible approach to measure present population exploits data collected by Mobile Network Operators (MNO), from simple Call Detail Records (CDR) to more informative and complex signalling records. Such data, collected primarily for network operation processes, can be repurposed to infer patterns of human mobility. Two decades of research literature have produced several case studies, mostly focused on to CDR data, and a variety of ad-hoc methodologies tailored to specific datasets. Moving beyond the stage of explorative research, the regular production of official statistics across different MNO requires a more systematic approach to methodological development. Towards this aim, Eurostat and other members of the European Statistical System are working towards the definition of a general Reference Methodological Framework for processing MNO data for official statistics. In this contribution we report on the methodological aspects related to the estimation of present population density, for which we present a general and modular methodological structure that generalises previous proposals found in the academic literature. Along the way, we define a number of specific research problems requiring further attention by the research community. We stress the importance of comparing different methodological options at various points in the data workflow, e.g. in the geolocation of individual observations and in the inference method. Finally, we present illustrative results from a case-study based on real signalling data from a European operational network, complemented by numerical results from a simple simulation scenario.

Linked Open Statistical Data: Relevance and Prospects

After a detailed argumentation of the study’s relevance, this article discusses the prospects for introducing the concept of linked open statistics produced within the framework of a single information environment that ensures efficient production, dissemination, and reuse of statistical and administrative data. The implementation of this qualitatively new concept based on technological innovations and aimed to meet rapidly growing user demands is a key task of digital transformation, defined by the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of official statistics. The major part of open data concerns statistics such as demographic, economic and social indicators. Describing and presenting them in the form of linked open statistics sets an important background for accelerating socio-economic development by introducing new socially significant state, municipal, non-commercial and commercial services/products.Linked Open Statistical Data (LOSD) allows performing analysis based on a coordinated, integrated information environment as an alternative to using disparate and often controversial data sets. National statistical institutes and government bodies in many countries, together with international organizations, have already chosen the paradigm of linked open statistics. The authors discuss the advantages of this approach, as well as its practical application in international projects.The article presents the examples and best practices of linked open statistics in a number of publications and strategic documents within the European Statistical System. It also shows the constraints of the linked open statistics development due to the lack of accessible ontologies and standards - the extensions necessary to meet the requirements for classification and management of various concepts in statistics domain. The analysis of projects and initiatives carried out in the article reflects the possibilities and prospects of solving this problem in the field of state statistics. The authors formulate a set of recommendations based both on the analysis of international practice and on the results of their own development experience within the research project «Center of Semantic Integration».

An Appraisal of Common Reweighting Methods for Nonresponse in Household Surveys Based on the Norwegian Labour Force Survey and the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey

Abstract Despite increasing efforts during data collection, nonresponse remains sizeable in many household surveys. Statistical adjustment is hence unavoidable. By reweighting the design, weights of the respondents are adjusted to compensate for nonresponse. However, there is no consensus on how this should be carried out in general. Theoretical comparisons are inconclusive in the literature, and the associated simulation studies involve hypothetical situations not all equally relevant to reality. In this article we evaluate the three most common reweighting approaches in practice, based on real data in Norway from the two largest household surveys in the European Statistical System. We demonstrate how cross- examination of various reweighting estimators can help inform the effectiveness of the available auxiliary variables and the choice of the weight adjustment method.

Desafíos actuales en la estadística oficial

Las estadísticas oficiales son un instrumento para la toma de decisiones y un elemento esencial del debate político. Unas buenas estadísticas son, por tanto, imprescindibles para el buen funcionamiento de un sistema democrático. Para que las estadísticas puedan cumplir esta función es preciso que gocen de credibilidad pública. Esto es algo que se consigue mediante el seguimiento escrupuloso y constante de unas buenas prácticas. Pero los cambios tecnológicos, las evoluciones de la sociedad, que continuamente propone y adopta nuevos esquemas de organización y convivencia y nuevos estilos de vida, y la revolución creada por las redes sociales ponen a veces en riesgo esta credibilidad. En el Sistema Estadístico Europeo se han diseñado una serie de instrumentos dirigidos a preservar esta imagen de credibilidad. Algunos de ellos están siendo también adoptados por otras Regiones del mundo. Sin embargo, quedan aún importantes desafíos no resueltos.

Trusted Smart Statistics: How new data will change official statistics

Abstract In this discussion paper, we outline the motivations and the main principles of the Trusted Smart Statistics (TSS) concept that is under development in the European Statistical System. TSS represents the evolution of official statistics in response to the challenges posed by the new datafied society. Taking stock from the availability of new digital data sources, new technologies, and new behaviors, statistical offices are called nowadays to rethink the way they operate in order to reassert their role in modern democratic society. The issue at stake is considerably broader and deeper than merely adapting existing processes to embrace so-called Big Data. In several aspects, such evolution entails a fundamental paradigm shift with respect to the legacy model of official statistics production based on traditional data sources, for example, in the relation between data and computation, between data collection and analysis, between methodological development and statistical production, and of course in the roles of the various stakeholders and their mutual relationships. Such complex evolution must be guided by a comprehensive system-level view based on clearly spelled design principles. In this paper, we aim at providing a general account of the TSS concept reflecting the current state of the discussion within the European Statistical System.

Agricultural census 2020 – how to reduce costs and burden? The European Statistical System approach

Information on the structure of agriculture is necessary to understand the risks for, among others, food security and the environment. The FAO advises all countries to carry out an agricultural census every 10 years to get a full picture. The European Union (EU) collects data on farm structure for the common agricultural policy (CAP) and other policies, but at more frequent intervals. This paper presents the technical and methodological aspects of the newly modified system for the European agricultural censuses. Under the new set-up, EU countries can reduce the burden on respondents while increasing the availability of statistics for the census 2020. A set of 184 core variables is collected as a census for all farms above common physical thresholds in all countries with the target of covering 98% of each country’s agriculture. For sub-samples of farms, the core variables will be supplemented with variables grouped in three modules. The system allows countries to use multiple sources and methods to obtain data subject to meeting pre-defined quality requirements. The efforts of the European Statistical System (ESS) to allow countries who do not meet the census’s 98% coverage requirements to conduct a sample data collection on the smallest farms and further ways of reducing costs and burden are discussed.