Accuracy and reliability

Overall accuracy

The overall accuracy is primarily affected by whether the day-care facilities and municipalities have understood the questions they have been asked during the interview. Only minor corrections have been made Few problems have been observed in the answers from the day-care facilities. Some answers contained opposing information or wrong answers. Such answers are not systematically in the data.

The number of answers from institutions is 88 pct. out of 3952 institutions. Therefore, the accuracy of the survey might be effected by not representing all observations in the population. Data from day-care facilities will be further updated in December and the accuracy is therefore expected to improve with this update.

Sampling error

Not relevant for this survey

Non-sampling error

Minor mistakes have been observed in the question related to whether the day-care facility offers the same lunch-schemes across all age-groups. Some interviewers have noticed a “no”, but answered as the respondent was offering lunch-schemes across all age-groups. This is possible because the interviewers are using a paper to notice its answers. The questionnaire on paper forces the interviewer to navigate through filters. It is estimated that some of the interviewers might have misunderstood the question. Another explanation seems to be, that the interviewer has noticed a wrong answer. In cases where the problem has been observed, the problem has been handled by DST-survey.

The survey is a count of lunch-schemes.

Quality management

Statistics Denmark follows the recommendations on organisation and management of quality given in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and the implementation guidelines given in the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF). A Working Group on Quality and a central quality assurance function have been established to continuously carry through control of products and processes.

Quality assurance

Statistics Denmark follows the principles in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and uses the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF) for the implementation of the principles. This involves continuous decentralized and central control of products and processes based on documentation following international standards. The central quality assurance function reports to the Working Group on Quality. Reports include suggestions for improvement that are assessed, decided and subsequently implemented.

Quality assessment

No major errors have been observed in the collection of data for this statistic. However, the survey does not include all day-care institutions in Denmark. It implies that the quality is high, but the number of observations in the survey reduces the quality of the survey. It might be problematic to evaluate information on a single municipalities consisting of few day-care institutions. The missing observations do not seem to be systematically and therefore seems to represent a good general overview of lunch-schemes in Denmark. The quality of the survey is expected to increase with the update in December, where a quality procedure and further surveys will be conducted. According to the above reasons only minor revisions are expected on general level, but significant revisions might occur in municipalities with few observations.

A weakness in the survey is the lack of possibilities to compare this survey with previous years. This statistic was first conducted in 2018.

Data revision - policy

Statistics Denmark revises published figures in accordance with the Revision Policy for Statistics Denmark. The common procedures and principles of the Revision Policy are for some statistics supplemented by a specific revision practice.

Data revision practice

These statistics are not systematically revised, but only if significant errors and omissions are detected.