Summary

Main objectives of sample co-ordination are to obtain comparable and coherent statistics, high precision in estimates of change over time and to spread the response burden evenly among the businesses. Sample co-ordination means to introduce dependence between two consecutive samples for the same survey or between samples for different surveys in order to minimise or maximise their overlap (number of units in common). Sample co-ordination is very useful and therefore commonly used among business surveys although sample co-ordination makes sampling and estimation more complicated (in contrast to the use of independent samples) because standard methods for sampling and estimation cannot be used in many cases. There are two main categories of methods that can be used for sample co-ordination and within each category there are a number of different methods. Many countries have implemented sample co-ordination but the specific method varies. This module includes an introduction to sample co-ordination in general, main principles to obtain different kind of co-ordination and some comments on sample co-ordination in practice.

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