John Kovar has asked me to pass on the following message:

I would like to bring to your attention the following Invited Paper Session
Competition. PLEASE REPLY DIRECTLY TO JOHN KOVAR: [log in to unmask], or to
any of the organizing committee members listed below. Your help in
distributing this announcement widely, would be greatly appreciated.


INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ESTABLISHMENT SURVEYS - II

Survey Methods for Businesses, Farms, and Institutions
June, 2000  -  Buffalo, New York


INVITED PAPER SESSION COMPETITION
Deadline for proposals: December 1, 1998


BACKGROUND AND GOALS

A second International Conference on Establishment Surveys (ICES-II) is
being planned for June, 2000, in Buffalo, New York.  The first ICES held in
Buffalo in June, 1993 convened more than 400 experts in the area of
business, agriculture and institutional surveys.  The monograph papers were
published by J. Wiley in 1995 in a volume entitled Business Survey Methods,
edited by B. Cox et al.  Since the first ICES, many new techniques have
been implemented by practitioners around the globe. The first conference
set the stage by formally documenting the state of the art at that time.
With the new millennium upon us, it is time for a forward look at methods
for surveying businesses, farms, and institutions.  Both invited as well as
contributed sessions are planned, in addition to workshops and software
demonstrations. At this time, the conference organizing committee is
seeking proposals for the invited sessions. The sessions will be selected
through a competitive process, with the aim of producing a balanced
program. A call for contributed papers will follow.


DESCRIPTION OF THE INVITED SESSIONS

The ideal invited session will bring together both theory and practice on
any of the topics listed below.  Empirical work and evaluation studies are
of particular interest.  The focus must be on surveys of establishments,
with evident links to the subject. In addition to proposals addressing the
new millennium theme, the committee will give full consideration to all
business survey related proposals.  A hardcover, un-edited, proceedings
volume of the invited papers will be produced after the conference.  The
organizing committee is seeking funding to be able to partially subsidise
those invited authors that may need some support.


LIST OF POTENTIAL TOPICS

Registers and Frames: profiling, classification, maintenance, evaluation,
demographics of enterprises, coping with frame errors

Survey Design and Sampling: respondent burden, panel surveys, longitudinal
surveys, area sampling, robustness over time, sample rotation,
multi-phase-sampling, coordinating samples between surveys

Data collection: response rates, costs, electronic data reporting,
questionnaire design, cognitive aspects, measurement errors,
re-interview/evaluation

Data processing: editing, macro editing, imputation, data warehousing, cost
benefit analyses, automated systems

Estimation:  small area methods, Bayesian methods, mass imputation,
variance estimation, outliers

Dissemination: presentation, disclosure control, on site facilities for
micro-data research, remote access, web publishing, technology, public use
files, data sharing, output quality indicators

Sector Specific Issues: surveys of health-care facilities, nursing homes,
hospitals, schools and correctional and other institutions, agriculture
surveys, education surveys, production of price indexes

Cross cutting issues: data warehousing, survey integration, derived
products, meta analysis, administrative data use, time series methods,
impact of deregulated industries, international comparisons, data quality
measurement and evaluation


HOW TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS

Invited sessions will have four slots of 25 minutes each.  Ideally, these
would be used for three 25-minutes presentations, followed by a 15-minute
formal discussion (invited discussant) and a 10-minute floor discussion.
Special formats will be considered (e.g. four 25-minute talks, case study
sessions, a panel discussion with three or four panelists using about half
the allocated time followed by a floor discussion, etc.).  The allocation
of special-format invited sessions will be limited and thus the standard
format is recommended.  A 300 word description of the session and its
format, and a list of possible speakers with preliminary paper topics and
titles should be submitted to John Kovar organizing committee chair, at
[log in to unmask]  Questions related to the submissions can be addressed in
the same manner.  The winners of the competition will be notified in the
spring of 1999.


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

John G. Kovar, Chair, Statistics Canada, 3-A, R.H. Coats Bldg., 120
Parkdale Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0T6
[log in to unmask] (613) 951-8615 (voice), (613) 951-5711 (fax)

David Archer, Statistics New Zealand

Silvia Biffignandi, Universitá degli studi di Bergamo, Italia

David Binder, Statistics Canada

Patrick J. Cantwell, U.S. Bureau of the Census

Lynda T. Carlson, U.S. Energy Information Administration

John Charlton, U.K. Office of National Statistics

Brenda G. Cox, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Carol C. House, U.S. National Agricultural Statistics Service

Daniel Kasprzyk, U.S. National Center for Education Statistics

Peter Kooiman, Statistics Netherlands

Geoff Lee, Australian Bureau of Statistics

Carl Ramirez, U.S. General Accounting Office

Stuart Scott, Bureau of Labor Statistics

__________________

David A. Binder                  [log in to unmask]
Director                         [log in to unmask]
Business Survey Methods Division |TEL: 1-613-951-0980 (Office)
11-A R.H. Coats Building         |1-613-226-7292 (Home)
Statistics Canada                |FAX: 1-613-951-1462
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1A 0T6  |




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