Guide to basic quality assurance in statistics

Introduction

The production of high quality statistics is a fundamental priority for all members of the statistician group. There are frequent and important statements about quality in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and these are picked up in the National Statistician’s guidance on Quality on the UK Statistics Authority’s website. These are clear about the requirement on those producing official statistics to ensure that quality is monitored and assured.

The definition of Quality as relevant to Official Statistics is necessarily broad and covers relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, comparability, and coherence. This short guide outlines some issues and hints based on the experiences of some of your colleagues. We hope that you will find it useful.

The guide is not intended to be exhaustive and should not be treated as a check-list, rather it should help you to raise questions about the approach you are taking to the quality assurance of your data. Reflecting on your current approach may help you to put in place necessary improvements and the implementation of a robust approach to quality assurance which remains valid over the coming years.