Summary

The specification of the survey frame is one of the most important parts of the design phase in the business process of surveys. In most cases, the business register (BR) meets the requirements to assign the survey frame of a business survey. Sometimes other information or another register is needed to supplement the BR in order to observe a given type of activity of the enterprises. Sometimes the unit of the target population is not able to supply data; in these cases another unit has to be chosen as data supplier. Therefore the survey design phase has to define the unit and scope of target population, the collection units and the register as a base of the survey frame. The reference time of the frozen state of the register and the conditions in selecting and assigning the units of the survey frame also have to be specified. The survey frame has to contain the attributes (contact, stratifying, size, classification, etc.) of the units demanded by the sampling, data collection and processing phases.

If no suitable register is available for the creation of the survey frame, then it's the task of the design phase to determine the way of its substitution or the sources to either correct the BR or to create a new register for the survey.

Survey design has to prepare for the integration of surveys with suitable assignment of survey frames, during the frame coordination. It has to assign the building blocks of the populations and the common classifications that might help to integrate data coming from different surveys.

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