Official Statistics
Official statistics are published periodically by government bodies and other public institutions to monitor different aspects of society. Police records and surveys can for example be used to estimate annual crime across regions in a country. Other examples of official statistics are unemployment rates, health, welfare and other Sustainable Development Goals.
Often, statistics use information from different sources. For example, police records include only reported crimes but are rich on detail on the type and location of crimes, while surveys may include more occurrences of crimes, but also include errors and lack detail on the exact type and location of the crime.
The official statistics group does research on how to improve official statistics. Research for example includes methods to link multiple sources for population size estimation on such topics as human trafficking, undocumented aliens, domestic violence and the census, and estimate the quality of statistics derived from multiple sources.
It also includes methods to optimize data collection under non-response and deal with missing data, and the development of innovative data collection techniques useful for making better, more targeted, or timelier official statistics.
Collaboration
Our collaboration partners in this research:
Funding
- 2019-2024. NWO VIDI grant for Daniel Oberski: “valid measures derived from incidental data” 2020.
- 2020-2025. NWO Large Scale Infrastructure grant: “Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations”.
Researchers involved
prof. dr. Barry Schouten
Professor by Special AppointmentEmail: j.g.schouten@uu.nlPhone: 06 24 090 449