Household Survey Producers Workshop

Opening Remarks

Household Survey Producers Workshop

CNSTAT Panel on the 

Redesign of the CE

June 1-2, 2011

Mike Horrigan

Associate Commissioner

Office of Prices and Living Conditions

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1
Mission of the CE

The mission of the Consumer Expenditure Survey program (CE) is 

to collect, produce, and disseminate information that presents a 

statistical picture of consumer spending for the Consumer Price 

Index, government agencies, and private data users. 

The mission encompasses analyzing CE data to produce socioeconomic studies of consumer spending, and providing CE data 

users with assistance, education, and tools for working with the 

data. 

CE supports the mission of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 

therefore CE data must be of consistently high statistical 

quality, relevant, timely, and must protect respondent 

confidentiality.

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CNSTAT Tasks

Summary of Work Statement

 National Research Council – CNSTAT Expert 

“Consensus” Panel

Data User Needs Forum

Survey Methods Workshop

Household Survey Producers Workshop

Workshop on Redesign Options

– Two independent contracts with redesign 

recommendations

 Consensus report

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CNSTAT Tasks

Summary of Work Statement

 Consensus Report

Menu of comprehensive and concrete redesign 

options that can be implemented

Build in design flexibility in an uncertain budget 

environment

Recommendations for future research

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CNSTAT Tasks

Summary of Work Statement

Redesign should focus on:

– Underreporting of expenditures

– Fundamental changes in the social environment for 

collection of survey data 

– Fundamental changes in the retail environment (e.g., 

online spending, automatic payments)

– The potential availability of large amounts of expenditure 

data from a relatively small number of intermediaries 

such as credit card companies

– Declining response rates at the unit, wave and item 

levels

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CNSTAT Tasks

Summary of Work Statement

 Balanced evaluation of costs/benefits of:

Feasible data collection technologies

Availability of efficacy of using administrative and 

external data sources

 Two roads to Redesign

Redesign from scratch

– Pro active approaches

Changes within the current design

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CNSTAT Tasks

Summary of Work Statement

 Current CE research

Web diaries

Individual diaries

Streamlining the Interview Survey

Reducing the length of the bounding interview

Double placement of diaries

Reconciliation of expenditures and income/assets

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What we know

 Need to stay within budget

 Need to maintain the value of the survey to 

taxpayers and data users

 Need to support the needs of CPI

 Need to support other data users as much as 

possible as long as the design meets the needs of the 

core CE mission

 What makes CE unique is the complete picture of 

spending, in all categories, at the household level, 

with household income, assets and demographics.

 CE data priorities

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What we don’t know

 The final level of expenditure detail that will be 

needed to support CPI’s needs after redesign

CE has a very detailed set of current technical 

requirements from CPI.

In cases where CE does not provide enough detail 

to meet CPI’s needs, CPI adopts alternative 

approaches.

– Example: Level of detail in the CE for gasoline

Possible future CPI information needs that could 

be provided by a redesigned CE?

– Example: collection of the name of the outlet where 

purchases were made.

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What we don’t know

 What are the possible administrative data 

sources that could be used to replace some of 

the data CE collects, or could be used to model 

data?

 What are the feasible technological solutions for 

data collection?

 What will be data users’ reaction to collecting less 

than the complete picture of spending and using 

more imputed/modeled data to create that missing 

data.

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Consensus on the redesign so far

 CE needs to publish a complete picture of 

spending, but we do not need to collect all of 

those data directly from respondents. Possible 

approaches include:

 Multiple matrix design

 Imputation of missing data 

 Use of a split sample

 To reduce burden and improve data quality, CE is 

interested in moving away from a retrospective 

recall based design to one that is more proactive

 Use of records, electronic data collection tools

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FY 2012 Budget

 The FY 2011 budget provides funding for the CE 

program that will allow for a research sample to 

conduct field tests of redesign options.

 If this initiative is not funded, CE will continue to 

use its existing resources, which includes the 

ability to conduct field tests on production 

sample units, to explore redesign options.

 Receipt of the FY 2012 CE funding initiative will 

place the work of redesign on a faster track.

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Agenda for the Workshop

 Alternative ways of measuring consumer 

expenditures with special focus on international 

examples.

 Designs that add flexibility in data collection 

mode.

 Designs that effectively mix data from multiple 

surveys and/or external/administrative data to 

produce estimates

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Agenda for the Workshop

 Designs that effectively mix global and detail 

information to reduce burden and measurement 

error.

 Designs that use event history methodology to 

improve recall and reduce measurement error in 

recall surveys.

 Diary surveys that effectively utilized technology 

to facilitate recordkeeping or recall.

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Contact Information

Mike Horrigan

Associate Commissioner

Office of Prices and Living 

Conditions

www.bls.gov

202-691-5735

horrigan.michael@bls.gov