Statistical Terms Glossary

Statistics produced in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics by a national statistical office or by another producer of official statistics that has been mandated by the national government or certified by the national statistical office to compile statistics for its specific domain.

Data and content that can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose. 

Software that has its source code made available by use of a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to change and distribute the software freely to anyone and for any purpose. 

Organizational entity within a government ministry, department or agency, other than the national statistical office, that develops, produces and disseminates official statistics.

Evaluation of a statistical organization, statistical process and/or statistical output by one or more people with similar competencies to the producer.

Register of persons maintained for administrative or statistical purposes.

Data collected directly by a producer of official statistics exclusively for official statistical purposes.

Organization that produces primary data.

The limitations on the use, and the degree of protection, guaranteed by a statistical organization collecting data to the entity providing the data.

National statistical office or other producer of official statistics.

The procedures and systems that support quality assurance within an organization.

(same as) quality assessment

(same as) quality management system

(same as) quality management system

Comprehensive set of principles on which a quality management system is based.

Set of interrelated or interacting elements of an organization to establish quality policies and quality objectives, and processes to achieve those objectives.                                                                                    

Report conveying information about the quality of a statistical output and/or process.

(same as) quality assessment

An unincorporated enterprise that operates as if it were a corporation and thus must be treated as such. 

Statistical metadata that describes the contents and the quality of the statistical data from a semantic point of view. 

List of units maintained for administrative or statistical purposes, including characteristics of the units needed to meet the purposes.

Dissemination activity by which official statistics become publicly known for the first time.

Pre-defined schedule when key indicators and datasets are planned to be released at regular intervals and/or on given dates. 

(same as) release calendar

Identification of a value that has been suppressed in a table by reference to the values of other cells in the table.

(Same as) microdata

Group convened by a national statistical office with the aim of collecting feedback on statistical outputs, typically comprising the most important users in a particular subject matter area.

Is similar to Google Forms in that it supports any kind of online survey. The free version supports only a very small number of respondents. The paid version has no such limitations.

Is a free software tool that can support an unlimited number of surveys, each with an unlimited number of respondents. It allows the addition of custom logos, images and videos. It enables simple skip logic and page branching. The survey can be delivered by a link to a website or by e-mail. Survey answers and data are automatically collected in Google Spreadsheets. The tool is appropriate for an NSO with very limited resources wishing to conduct a simple survey.

Is an open-source online survey management system developed by the European Union for creating questionnaires and other forms and using them to collect data through the Internet. While its main purpose is to create official surveys of public opinion and forms for internal communication and staff management (for example, staff opinion surveys, evaluation forms, and registration forms), it can support the design of any type of web-based questionnaire. It provides a wide variety of elements used in questionnaires, ranging from the simple (such as text questions and multiple-choice questions) to the advanced (such as editable spreadsheets and multimedia elements).