Sources of Measurement Errors in Business Surveys

Measurement errors are commonly ascribed to four sources: the respondent, the interviewer, the instrument (the survey questionnaire), and the mode of data collection. The unique characteristics of business population and business surveys affect the survey response process and contribute to the occurrence of specific measurement errors. Several authors have already exposed the need for an additional source of measurement errors in business surveys: the records or the information system or, even more broadly, the organization. Although this addition considerably improves the usefulness of the categorization, some sources of measurement errors still lack. This paper proposes an extension of the existing categorization in order to cover all known sources of measurement errors in business surveys and elaborates on its implications for detection, reduction and prevention of measurement errors in business surveys.