If You Don’t Like The Results, Suppress The Data
Mar 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 am by Susie
Dean Baker over at Max’s place:
The Bush administration’s plan to reduce the flow of bad economic news, by eliminating the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), is running into opposition. More than 400 researchers, including 2 Nobel Laureates signed a letter opposing the elimination of the SIPP. The SIPP is the only major longitudinal survey that tracks the same families over time. While it has a representative sample that allows it to be used to examine issues affecting the whole population, it over samples low income households, which makes it especially useful for examining the impact of TANF, Medicaid, and other anti-poverty programs. Ostensibly, the reason for eliminating the SIPP is to save the $40 million annual cost of fielding the survey (@ 6hours of the Iraq war).
Usually, plans to alter or eliminate major surveys are floated well in advance in order to get input from the community of researchers, policy makers, and advocates that rely on the survey. This plan was crafted in the dark of night and kept secret until the 2007 budget was released. Perhaps the secrecy was needed to keep us safe from the terrorists, but this does not seem like best path for producing reliable data.
What Gets Measured…
What gets measured, gets done. It’s one of the core precepts of good management and good leadership. It is not always the easiest thing to do — especially if the challenge at hand is best measured — or evaluated -……