A Study on Vital Statistics Survey : its Type, Source of Errors and Improvement Scheme

인구동태조사 개선을 위한 방법론적 고찰

It is well known that vital statistics is of great importance as basic data for establishing various range of national policies. Especially, vital statistics is important among demographic information for monitoring and evaluating the population policy, for constructing life table, for making population projection, and for studying various aspects of the society. In principle, the production of vital statistics is based on the registration system. It is, however, still observed that there are some limitations in utilizing fully the registration system due to the inherent problems such as problems in its coverage, accuracies and timeliness. Thus, as an alternative, many countries conduct survey on vital statistics in order to supplement the registration system and obtain in-depth data. Korea is no exception in this aspect. The National Bureau of Statistics carries out the so-called Continuous Demographic Survey. This is a kind of multi-round retrospective survey, covering 32, 000 households and having reference period of one month. The survey has also characteristics of multi-subject sample. Thus, surveys on economic activity status of population, house-hold income & expenditure, and social indicators are together conducted with the same sample. It is, however, found that the survey itself tends to have some quality problems. Especially, the quality problems connected with field data collection are summarized as coverage error, non-response error and response error. Although it is inevitable not to be free from these errors, we should make all our efforts to reduce the errors. The probable schemes pointed out in this paper are as follows : 1) the strengthening formal quality control activities, 2) the review of the survey method, i. e., the combining interview method with mail-sending and mail-back method or pick-up method, 3) well documentation for various cases found in every stage of data collection, and 4) the strengthening the analytical activities. It is, also, emphasized that sincerity of planners and interviewers is the most important factor among other things.