Description: Data collection is the primary and most important step for research or any survey. The most critical objective of data collection is ensuring that information-rich and quality data is collected for statistical analysis so that data-driven decisions can be made for research or survey. Data Collection can be done in three (3) ways, Paper Assisted Personal Interview, Computer Assisted Personal interview (CAPI) and Mixed model with integration of Geographical Information System (GIS) to collect survey data. Quality data allows individual researchers, institutions to establish baselines, benchmarks, and goals to keep moving forward. Data allows setting performance goals, therefore the quality of data in surveys is critical. The absence of quality data makes it difficult to make evidence-based policy and planning decisions, monitor trends and evaluate interventions. This training course on Data Collection provides solution in the production of quality data through integration of technologies in Data Collection.
Target Audience: People working in Ministries, Local Government Authorities and Agencies as Planners, Statisticians, Economist, and Monitoring and Evaluation Officers and the Academia.
Description: Data collection is the primary and most important step for research or any survey. The most critical objective of data collection is ensuring that information-rich and quality data is collected for statistical analysis so that data-driven decisions can be made for research or survey. Data Collection can be done in three (3) ways, Paper Assisted Personal Interview, Computer Assisted Personal interview (CAPI) and Mixed model with integration of Geographical Information System (GIS) to collect survey data. Quality data allows individual researchers, institutions to establish baselines, benchmarks, and goals to keep moving forward. Data allows setting performance goals, therefore the quality of data in surveys is critical. The absence of quality data makes it difficult to make evidence-based policy and planning decisions, monitor trends and evaluate interventions. This training course on Data Collection provides solution in the production of quality data through integration of technologies in Data Collection.
Target Audience: People working in Ministries, Local Government Authorities and Agencies as Planners, Statisticians, Economist, and Monitoring and Evaluation Officers and the Academia.
Description: UNSD, together with the SADC Secretariat and the Collaborative on Administrative Data (CAD), carried out a five-day regional workshop on the use of administrative data sources for migration statistics from 17-21 March 2025 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop was also supported by the participation of the International Organization for Migation (IOM) and the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Description: Body BackgroundUNCTAD’s Trade-in-Services Statistics Information System (TiSSTAT) is an integrated platform designed to streamline and standardize the collection, validation, and analysis of trade in services data. Developed to address the challenges countries face in producing accurate and harmonized trade in services statistics, TiSSTAT facilitates improved survey design, data collection, data cleaning, and reporting. By enabling a more systematic approach to data management, TiSSTAT supports policymakers in making informed decisions that enhance the competitiveness of their economies.As part of the United Nations Development Account project “Strengthening capacity for evidence-based policymaking and the economic resilience of CARICOM” and in response to requests from countries, a TiSSTAT Playground has been developed, allowing countries to explore its environment and functionalities before making a commitment to full installation. This strategic initiative aims to ensure that countries can assess the system’s relevance, benefits, and feasibility for national implementation without requiring immediate deployment.ObjectiveThe main objective of the training is to guide participating countries through the TiSSTAT Playground, enabling them to explore its functionalities and understand how it can enhance trade in services data collection. By providing hands-on experience with the system, the training aims to help countries evaluate its relevance and potential benefits for their national statistical processes, ensuring a smooth transition to full-scale implementation.As part of its phased implementation strategy, UNCTAD has developed the TiSSTAT Playground and structured online training sessions to strengthen the capacity of countries before full-scale implementation and software deployment. This approach allows countries to familiarize themselves with the system in a controlled environment, building confidence and ensuring they are well-prepared for the transition to the full version of TiSSTAT. The explorer and online training sessions are designed to gather user feedback, refine the system based on real-world experiences, and ensure a more effective and tailored rollout.By allowing countries to explore TiSSTAT in advance, UNCTAD ensures a more effective and customized implementation strategy, maximizing the impact of the full-scale deployment. This proactive approach reflects UNCTAD’s commitment to capacity building, ensuring that national statistical systems are well-prepared for the digital transformation of trade in services statistics.
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 01 Dec 2024 )
[+] More
Organizer(s): Eurostat Icon-Institut
Description: The main objective of the courses is to enhance the theoretical and practical knowledge related to the treatment of unit non-response and item non-response. In particular, participants will gain knowledge on weighting techniques in order to deal with unit non-response and imputation techniques in order to deal with item non-response. For unit-nonresponse, participants will also learn about up to date monitoring of data collection and application of adaptive survey designs.
Target Audience: All NSIs staff dealing with data collection facing non-response, either unit non-response where entire units intended to be collected are missing or item non-response where some items of otherwise responding units are missing.
Description: Background National Statistics Offices and National SDG focal points often struggle with outdated or limited SDG data due to challenges in collecting, validating, and harmonizing data from various national entities. This limits the countries’ ability to disseminate timely statistics, coordinate the production of SDG data, and report on its progress towards the 2030 targets. ESCAP has received requests to develop a user-friendly platform to centralize SDG data management at the national level. The platform would connect to a dissemination tool, such as the Open SDG, thus facilitating the end-to-end dataflow to dissemination. ESCAP is organizing this expert dialogue with selected users of open-source SDG data dissemination tools to better understand their needs and identify the key features of a possible solution. Concept note and tentative programme Objectives The event aims to: Understand national requirements and challenges related to the process of centralizing, validating, and disseminating SDG data; In consultation among countries, establish a general dataflow that covers the usual scenarios for data collection; and Identify use cases of a potential platform based on participants’ inputs
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 07 Mar 2024 )
[+] More
Organizer(s): Eurostat EFTA FSO Switzerland
Description: The objective of the course is to introduce participants to some advanced techniques of non-response treatment, variance estimation, calibration and sample coordination. Theoretical concepts and findings will be illustrated by examples and practical exercises. The course starts with an introduction to the R software, which will allow participants to better understand practical applications of presented survey techniques and their successful implementation in practice.
Target Audience: Junior or senior staff of methodology divisions using sample survey techniques in the production of statistics or staff with comparable knowledge.
Description: As an integral part of the national data ecosystem, integrating household surveys with other data sources has become paramount to produce data that are more comprehensive, inclusive and timely. Such integration also helps improve quality and efficiency of household surveys. Improving sampling efficiency and coverage is one of the eight technical priorities of the "Positioning Household Surveys for the Next Decade", a paper prepared by the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys to guide the Group its support to national statistical offices. In this context, the UN Statistics Division and the National Bureau of Statistics of China are co-organising an international seminar on Integrating Household Surveys with diverse data sources. The seminar aims to foster knowledge exchange, explore innovative approaches, and address challenges related to survey data integration and interoperability. You are invited to submit abstracts (max. 250 words) for the technical meeting, focusing on one or more of the following aspects: - Practical experiences in negotiating data access with other data owners and in maintaining ethical standard and data confidentiality. - Experiences and work undertaken to improve interoperability of household surveys by design. - Methods used to build a multi-source frame for sampling. - Innovative approaches to integrate household survey with other data sources such as censuses, other surveys, administrative data and nontraditional data such as remote sensing, mobile phone positioning data, social media data and citizen-generated data. This may include record linkage or modelling. - Quality considerations for data integration and integrated data. We have limited funding for experts from low-income and lower-middle income countries. Deadline for submitting your abstract: 15 September 2024 (if you are interested in applying for funding) and 30 September otherwise. https://forms.office.com/e/LJY6Zxzsic.
Description: Report of the Workshop Provisional Programme Concept note (English | 中文) Self-Assessment Tool on the Readiness to Use Administrative Data for Census (SATRAC) (Excel file) Objectives and Outcomes The workshop aims to strengthen participants’ capacity on how to better use administrative data to support the census. The objectives of the workshop are to: Provide an overview of the different potential uses of administrative data sources for the census. Discuss the concepts, features, preconditions, considerations, challenges, opportunities, and processes involved in the use of administrative data sources for census purposes. Discuss the self-assessment tool on the readiness to use administrative data for census purposes. Introduce the “Generic model for the transition from a traditional census to register-based approaches”. Draft potential approaches to increase the use of administrative data for censuses in participating countries. Exchange experience and learn from participating countries. Resources This workshop builds upon the Regional Training Workshop on Transition to Register-based Approaches for Population and Housing Censuses. Some of the key resources for this workshop include: UNFPA Register-Based Census eLearning Course United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Guidelines on the use of registers and administrative data for population and housing censuses. United Nations, New York and Geneva, 2018. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Guidelines for assessing the quality of administrative sources for use in censuses. United Nations, Geneva, 2021. United Nations Statistics Division. Handbook on Registers-Based Population and Housing Censuses, 2022. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Emerging Trends in Census Approaches in Asia and the Pacific – with country examples. United Nations, Bangkok, 2022. ESCAP Stats Briefs: Tapping into administrative data in census-taking: an emerging trend in Asia and the Pacific (2022) Are population censuses in Asia and the Pacific evolving? (2021) Population registers: a key resource for producing vital statistics (2020)
Description: The overall objective of this technical assistance is to improve the technical capacity of staff and management of the Department of Gender Affairs, the Department of Statistics, and other Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Government of Turks and Caicos Islands to collect, analyze, utilize and disseminate sex-disaggregated data in accordance with international standards and best practices.
Description: This Joint Webinar of the Intersecretariat Working Group on Household Surveys (ISWGHS) and of the Global Network of Data Officers and Statisticians, which was attended by around 210 participants, featured Stephanie Eckman from the Social Data Science Center of the University of Maryland. She discussed how insights from survey methodology can help improve the quality of training and feedback data used for machine learning models like large language models (LLMs) which can improve model performance. Stephanie highlighted two key areas where survey methodology principles are relevant: 1) Representation - ensuring the labelers who train the models are representative of the target population, and 2) Measurement - ensuring the labeling instruments and procedures yield high-quality labels. On representation, she showed how characteristics of the labelers can impact the labels and resulting models, creating selection biases. If many labelers are from specific countries/regions then this can introduce demographic biases. One possible solution to adjust for this is using statistical weights for the different groups of labelers. On measurement, she described how aspects of the labeling interface like question wording, order, and format can significantly impact the quality of labels, which then impacts the trained model performance. Through an experiment, she demonstrated the importance of carefully designing labeling instruments akin to survey design principles. The Q&A covered topics like using sentiment analysis instead of binary labels, accounting for survey fatigue, leveraging existing survey data for model training, and concerns around cultural biases embedded in LLMs trained primarily on data from western, rich countries. Overall, Stephanie made a strong case for interdisciplinary collaboration between the survey research and AI/ML communities to improve training data quality and develop more accurate, unbiased AI models aligned with human values.
Description: UNSD and UNDP, under the Data For Now initiative, organized a high-level seminar to discuss and establish a mutual understanding of how to better collaborate and make increased use of administrative data sources for statistics production. The event was followed by a practical workshop which provided an opportunity to jointly engage on technical level, ensuring that administrative data sources can be used for official statistics production.
Sierra Leone has identified, among others, two priority areas and respective SDG indicators that can be calculated using administrative data sources, environment and climate (SDG 13.1.1, 14.4.1 and 14.7.1) and crime and justice (SDG 16.1.1), that feeds into the National Mid Term Development Plan (NMTDP) and other policy documents.
The events were attended by high-level representatives and technical staff of the national statistical office and line ministries and agencies across sectors, including the National Disaster Management Agency, the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources and the Justice Sector Coordination Office. The high-level seminar focused on the importance of data sharing within government and with the public for more informed decision-making, while the training covered different components, from mapping to quality management of administrative data sources, from metadata to data-sharing, interoperability and security.
Before and after the events, several meetings took place both online and in person, including a knowledge exchange with Dominican Republic and Cameroon, facilitated by UNSD.
Participants jointly developed a roadmap for sharing administrative data between institutions in which collaboration and capacity building has been recognized as key-drivers of change.
Title in Spanish: Seminario sobre Integración de fuentes de datos y estadísticas oficiales
Organizer(s): ECLAC INEGI Mexico
Description: El propósito de generar un intercambio regional sobre los avances recientes en los distintos ámbitos de integración de fuentes de información, así como discutir sobre los desafíos que enfrentan los organismos productores de estadísticas oficiales y las alternativas para abordarlos con miras a la planificación estratégica para el próximo decenio.
Source: Eurostat (Data extracted on: 07 Mar 2024 )
[+] More
Organizer(s): Eurostat Icon-Institut
Description: The objective is to enable participants: * To have an understanding of the range of techniques which make up a cognitive interview; * To have increased their own ability to do cognitive interviewing; * To have insight into selecting and recruiting respondents; * To have insight into analysing cognitive interview data and creating better survey questions; * To have awareness of a broad range of uses for cognitive interviewing; * To have awareness of the contribution of cognitive interviewing in comparison to other testing methods; * To understand how cognitive interviewing can improve questionnaires on gender topics and thus the associated social statistics.
Target Audience: The course is targeted at NSI methodologists and social scientists whose work involves conducting surveys
Description: The Subgroup on Administrative and Other Data Sources under the United Nations Expert Group on National Quality Assurance Frameworks (EG-NQAF) organized its seventh meeting. A key agenda item was the review of the list of requirements that are of special importance in assuring the quality of official statistics when using administrative and other data sources and their links to the UN National Quality Assurance Framework (UN NQAF). Participants stressed the importance of establishing precise terminology aligned with the existing UN NQAF to prevent duplication of work and confusion. On the issue of implementation, the experts agreed to develop a module specifically for administrative and other data sources which will complement the existing UN NQAF. The meeting of the Subgroup was attended by 13 experts from national statistical offices and international organizations. The next meeting is scheduled for 6th December 2023.
Topics:
Sixth Meeting of the Subgroup on Administrative and Other Data Sources (EG-NQAF)
Description: The UN Expert Group on National Quality Assurance Frameworks (EG-NQAF) established a Subgroup on Administrative and Other Data Sources to provide practical and concise guidance and best practices for statistical agencies in assuring the quality of official statistics when administrative data sources and other (new) data sources are used for producing official statistics. At its sixth meeting the Subgroup discussed the progress in identifying relevant requirements for the use of administrative and other data sources based on the review of national practices and other available guidance. During the meeting, the secretariat presented a detailed analysis of the mapping of national practices to the UN National Quality Assurance Framework and the process of identifying relevant requirements. The Subgroup discussed the next steps of the work. In addition, the secretariat updated the Subgroup on the preparations for the upcoming Global Seminar on 14 November, which will present country examples on how the quality of the input data is affecting the quality of the statistical outputs. The meeting of the Subgroup was attended by 20 experts from national statistical offices and international organizations. The next meeting is scheduled for 29 November 2023.
Topics:
Global Webinar on Geospatial and Other Data Sources for Environment Statistics: Assessing the Impact of the Economy on the Environment
Description: This global webinar was organized as part of the activities of workstream 2.4 “Assessing the Impact of the Economy on the Environment” of the Statistics and Data Project “Resilient and agile National Statistical Systems to meet post-COVID-19 data needs to recover better” under the 14th tranche of the United Nations Development Account. It was co-organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Countries from the Western Asia, and Asia-Pacific regions were in attendance. This webinar followed a March webinar with the same content presented where member states from Europe and Africa attended. Upon the invitation of UNEP, UNSD presented on “Country-owned official statistics as a source for water statistics”. Due to the US Eastern 1:00am-4:00am time window of the webinar, the presentation was delivered via video on delay. When presenting on the context of water statistics collected via the UNSD/UNEP Questionnaire on Environment Statistics for over 20 years, UNSD emphasized sources used by countries, especially whereby a national statistical office maintains inter-institutional relations at varying levels (municipal, provincial, federal) of government. Methodologies and sources specified in the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics and the National Quality Assurance Frameworks Manual for Official Statistics were cited, as were existing work the section does whereby water statistics feed into policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Set of Climate Change Statistics and Indicators. For interested countries that are not currently involved in the data collection, they were advised to contact UNSD for information sessions on the Questionnaire. Such sessions are usually organized in collaboration with (co-)custodian organizations including UNEP, WHO and UN-Habitat and discussions include but are not limited to metadata of the indicators, concepts and definitions, use of the data and dissemination process.
Topics:
Global Webinar on Geospatial and Other Data Sources for Environment Statistics: Assessing the Impact of the Economy on the Environment
Description: This global webinar was organised as part of the activities of workstream 2.4 “Assessing the Impact of the Economy on the Environment” of the Statistics and Data Project “Resilient and agile National Statistical Systems to meet post-COVID-19 data needs to recover better” under the 14th tranche of the United Nations Development Account. It was co-organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Countries from the African, and Latin America and the Caribbean regions were in attendance. UNSD presented on “Country-owned official statistics as a source for water statistics”. UNSD emphasised sources used by countries, in particular that national statistical offices maintain inter-institutional relations at varying levels (municipal, provincial, federal) of government. Methodologies and sources specified in the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics and the National Quality Assurance Frameworks Manual for Official Statistics were referenced, as was UNSD’s work on water statistics which feeds into policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Set of Climate Change Statistics and Indicators. Interested countries that are not currently involved in the data collection, can reach out to UNSD for information sessions on the Questionnaire. Such sessions are usually organised in collaboration with (co-)custodian organisations including UNEP, WHO and UN-Habitat and discussions include but are not limited to metadata of the indicators, concepts and definitions, use of the data and dissemination process.
