Recommended Practices for Editing and Imputation in Cross-Sectional Business Surveys

Eurostat and the European National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) need to provide detailed high-quality data on all relevant aspects (economic, social, demographic, environmental) of modern societies. Moreover, the quality declaration of the European Statistical System (ESS) states that continuously improving a programme of harmonized European statistics is one of the major objectives of the ESS. Given the differences among the existing national statistical systems, the development of new approaches aiming at standardizing the statistical production processes for improving the quality of statistics and for a successful harmonization is essential. In particular, one of the two main purposes of the “European Statistics Code of Practice”, adopted by the Statistical Programme Committee on 24 February 2005, is: “To promote the application of best international statistical principles, methods and practices by all producers of European Statistics in order to enhance their quality”. In this framework, the European Community (represented by the Commission of the European Com-munities) is supporting the development of a set of handbooks on current best methods in order to facilitate the implementation of principle 8 of the Code of Practice- “Appropriate statistical proce-dures, implemented from data collection to data validation, must underpin quality statistics”. This work should capitalize on what has already been done in Member Countries, consolidate or comple