Using register data to evaluate the effects of proxy interviews in the Norwegian labour force survey
Journal article, Peer reviewed
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/177990Utgivelsesdato
2011Metadata
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Originalversjon
Journal of Official Statistics, 27, No. 1 (2011), pp. 87-98Sammendrag
We combine data from the Norwegian Labour Force Survey with register data in order
to evaluate the impact of proxy interviews on the survey-based employment rate estimates.
The method compares estimates under different models for proxy response and nonresponse
models, over a relatively long time series from 1997 to 2008. Using register-based
employment as an auxiliary variable, we try to differentiate between the effect of the
measurement and the effect of the fact that proxy-interviewed people are not selected at
random. We label these effects “proxy effect” and “selection effect” respectively, and suggest
methods for estimating them. Our conclusion, after also including the impact of nonresponse,
is that proxy interviews probably result in a better employment rate estimate, even though
they introduce some underreporting. The reason is that proxy interviews provide data on some
hard-to-reach people who have a labour-market situation more similar to that of those
not reached at all. We find that including the proxy responses has approximately the same
effect as post-stratification of the direct responses, using register-employment status as the
auxiliary variable.