Burden to Households & Individuals of Completing Statistical Surveys issued by Northern Ireland Departments 2020/21

Key Points

• In 2020/21, there were 121 surveys (or survey modules) issued to households and individuals by Northern Ireland Departments and their Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs).

• In total, 207,300 responses were received to these surveys or survey modules, and the estimated burden to NI households and individuals in 2020/21 due to completing surveys issued by Northern Ireland Departments was 61,275 hours, or 2,553 days. This represents an increase of 6,879 hours or 287 days compared to 2019/20.

• Three-fifths (59%) of the total burden in 2020/21 can be attributed to COVID-related surveys, which were specifically initiated to understand the impact of the pandemic. In particular, the COVID-19 infection survey contributed almost two-fifths (37%) of the total burden, while the COVID-19 opinion survey contributed just over one tenth (11%).

• Several surveys or survey modules (30) did not run in 2020/21 due to COVID related reasons, and many ongoing surveys saw a drop in their response rate in 2020/21. The data collection method was changed for many surveys to accommodate remote working or restrictions on face-to-face interaction.

• Electronic data collection methods (online, email, telephone data entry or digital voice recognition) were the most popular approaches in 2020/21, with two in five surveys (41%) using them, followed by telephone interviews (28%) and mixed methods (21%). This is in contrast to 2019/20 when face-to-face methods were the most popular approach (36%), followed by electronic methods (27%) and mixed methods (17%).

• Most surveys of households and individuals carried out by NI departments are relatively small (41% of surveys have burdens of less than 50 hours) with a few large but important surveys contributing most of the burden. In 2020/21, the four largest surveys were the COVID-19 infection survey, COVID-19 Opinion Survey, Labour Force Survey and Impact of COVID Student Survey. Together these four surveys were responsible for over three fifths (61%) of the total compliance burden.

• A quarter (25%) of the surveys (or survey modules) carried out in 2020/21 contributed to official statistics. These surveys accounted for over half the responses (53%) and over two-thirds of the burden (69%).

• In 2020/21, the average time taken to complete a survey (or survey module) issued by a NI department was 17.7 minutes which compares to 9.8 minutes in 2019/20. This increase is mostly due to the dominance of the COVID-19 infection survey which took on average 40 minutes per household to complete. There was, however, a wide variance in completion times across surveys, with the shortest survey taking on average less than a minute to complete, and the longest survey taking on average 2.5 hours per respondent.

• The Department of Health (DoH) was responsible for the highest proportion of the burden (41%) in 2020/21 and face-to-face methods accounted for the highest proportion of burden by data collection method (38%). This was mostly due to the COVID -19 Infection Survey which was a large face-to-face survey.

Further analysis and information on how surveys of households and individuals were used to assess the impact of COVID-19 and inform related decision-making can be found in the Statistical Bulletin.

Downloadable data containing detailed information for each survey is also published alongside the bulletin.