ECS 2019 - Quality assurance and quality control

The quality assurance framework for the European Company Survey (ECS) 2019 monitored and documented the various phases of survey preparation and implementation, ensuring that the survey would meet the quality criteria of relevance, accuracy, coherence, comparability, timeliness and punctuality, and accessibility, as identified in the European Statistical System. Quality control measures covered sampling, translation, pretesting and piloting, interviewer selection and training, fieldwork implementation, data processing and storage.

Detailed information on quality assurance and quality control can be found in the Quality control report.

• Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Quality control report

A specific aspect of quality control are the data validity checks that were carried out during and after data collection. In collaboration with the contractor an approach for data validation was developed. The approach combined the programming of warning messages in the questionnaire scripts, that were shown to respondents when they entered contradictory information with a set of data validity checks that were run after the data collection. These checks identified around 1% of interviews that did not meet the quality standards required to be included in the final dataset.

Detailed information on data validation and data editing can be found in the Data editing report.

• Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Data editing report

An external quality assessment of the ECS 2019 concluded that the ECS 2019 is a unique, nationally representative survey on workplace practices across establishments in the EU28 (since January 2020, the EU27 and the UK) that adopts best practices in terms of survey methodology.

More information can be found in the Data quality assessment report.

• Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Data quality assessment report