In The Field: Surveying the nation Statistically Speaking

In this episode we chat to members of the ONS Social Survey Collection Division about the importance, and challenges, of getting the general public to take part in crucial surveys that help paint a picture of what life is like across Britain.
 
Transcript 

MILES FLETCHER 

Welcome again to ‘Statistically Speaking’, the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics. I’m Miles Fletcher.  

Now I don’t know about you - but it seems hardly a moment passes these days when we are not being asked to feed back. How was our service today? Are you satisfied with this product?  Please fill in this short survey. Your responses matter. 

Well, forgive the natural bias, but today we’re talking about surveys that really do matter.  

ONS surveys – some of which are the very largest conducted regularly in the UK – don’t just inform economic and social policy, though they are hugely important to it. The data they gathered also represent a public resource of immense and unique value.  

But persuading people – some unaware, some sceptical and even hostile, others just very busy – to take part in them is a growing challenge for statistical institutions worldwide.      

In this episode then we’ll be discussing how the ONS gathers often personal data from members of the public right up and down the country.  

Taking time out of their day to answer my questions, and to explain why it’s absolutely crucial that you participate in our surveys if you get the opportunity to do so, are Emma Pendre and Beth Ferguson, who head up the ONS’s face-to-face Field Operations;  

and sharing their own personal experiences of life on other people’s doorsteps we have two of the ONS’s top Field Interviewers, Tammy Fullelove and Benjamin Land. 

Welcome to you all. 

Emma, if I come to you first – give us an idea of what exactly the field community in ONS is. Who are you and what do you do?  

EMMA PENDRE 

The Social Survey Collection Division is the largest division in ONS. We primarily collect data from households either online, face to face or by telephone using computer assisted interviewing, and also work at air, sea and rail ports collecting data from passengers. All the data collected is used to produce quite a number of our key ONS publications which help to paint a picture of what life is like in the UK. And these can include things like estimates of employment and unemployment, how we measure inflation, how we measure migration, and a key topic of interest at the moment is the cost of living. So while most of ONS relies on the data that we collect for our outputs and statistical bulletins, the statistics that we particularly generate also support research, policy development and decision making across government and other private sector businesses as well.  

MF 

Now Beth, bringing you in here, when it comes to household surveys, presumably someone's deciding which households are going to be approached to take part. Who makes those decisions and how is it done? 
 
BETH FERGUSON 
So I'm not going to pretend to understand the clever people in the statistics team who work out how we get the right people to cover a broad spectrum of society. But yes, that's done by the sampling team and they choose a random sample for the surveys.  

MF 

And that's generated presumably from using the electoral roll.  

BF 

It's generated from something called PAF which is the Post Office Address Finder. I'll have to confirm exactly what that stands for. Yes, but essentially, it's a list of addresses across England, Scotland and Wales.  

MF 

And when it comes to the passenger survey, it's a question of stopping what we hope will be a representative random sample of people as they pass through those ports.  

BF 

Yes, it is. Yeah. But at the moment we're currently working on departures and arrivals.