Score Function for Selective Editing of the U.S. Census Bureau Trade Data.

摘要

The Foreign Trade Division at the US Census Bureau is responsible for the production and publication of monthly import and export statistics. These data are not survey based, but collected electronically through an online internet filing system upon arrival or departure of merchandise goods. The validity of these data is checked and verified at every step of collection, processing, and tabulation. In this report we present score functions for selective editing of these data. The scores have two components: a measure of how suspicious an incoming record is and a measure of the impact changes in the record may have on publication totals within a particular set of commodity groupings. We also present results of a feasibility study on the application of selective editing to the checking and correction phase of foreign trade exports data processing.