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Report by the Electronic Discussion Group on Measuring Trust in Official Statistics

In June 2008, the OECD Committee on Statistics discussed "How to Monitor Trust in Official Statistics".  Based on papers presented by Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom, the discussion revealed that:

• A number of countries are currently undertaking surveys designed to monitor trust in official statistics;
• National circumstances vary a great deal; but
• A degree of comparability among national surveys would considerably improve their analytic usefulness.

In 2009,  the OECD Committee on Statistics formally established the Electronic Working Group on Measuring Trust in Official Statistics chaired by Ivan Fellagi, former Chief Statistician of Canada.  In 2010, the Group drafted a model survey questionnaire, which after review by the OECD Committee on Statistics, was submitted to cognitive testing by a number of National Statistical Offices and  Agencies. The survey was then revised to reflect the results of the testing. The following organisations participated in the cognitive testing:

• The Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Statistics Korea
• The Turkish Statistical Institute
• Statistics New Zealand
• The United States National Center for Health Statistics

The Model Survey Questionnaire and the report from the Electronic Discussion Group on Measuring Trust in Official Statistics are now available online. The OECD hopes that countries will find the model survey questionnaire useful and that many will  implement it or embed questions contained in it in their national surveys.

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