The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Ministry of Agriculture
Fisheries and Food (MAFF) who commission the FAMILY EXPENDITURE SURVEY (FES)
and NATIONAL FOOD SURVEY (NFS) respectively have been collaborating on a
merger programme to produce a single expenditure and food survey. The title
of this new survey is the Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS).
Following preliminary pilot work in 1998-1999 a large programme of research
was carried out during 1999-2000. This included a review of the
questionniare and diary content
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/fesrev.asp, a redesign of the
diaries, a review of the response rules (which included qualitative work and
the Question Testing Unit), work on imputation (carried out by Social Survey
Methodology Unit) and a new processing system. A small-scale pilot was
carried out during the autumn of 1999 and the EFS Development Board
recommended progress to the next stage, which was a large-scale pilot in
February and March 2000.
On 4th April 2001 the UK Data Archive held a workshop to bring together
ONS/MAFF staff working on the development of the EFS with data users. The
programme for the day can be viwed at:
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/FES-NFSeminarApril2001.asp and
powerpoint presentations.
ONS, as depositors of FES and, in the future, EFS data, are interested to
hear the all aspects of data and its dissemination, see pages
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/fesfdbk.asp
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