THE USE OF HAND-HELD COMPUTERS IN SOCIAL SURVEYS OF THE NETHERLANDS-CENTRAL-BUREAU-OF-STATISTICS

In this paper the use of handheld computers to collect data for social surveys of The Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is described. For a better understanding of the development of the use of microcomputers and especially handheld computers in social surveys of the CBS it is necessary to explain the position of the Department for Social Surveys at the CBS (Section 1). After the presentation of figures concerning computer assisted data collection and data processing (Section 2), a brief historical overview of the introduction of the use of microcomputers at the Department for Social Surveys is given (Section 3). With the introduction of the handheld computer the survey process itself changes. This change is explained in Section 4. Experiences are described in Section 5. In Section 6 attention is paid to conditions and circumstances which have to be fulfilled to reach an optimum use of computer assisted data collection and data processing. Finally, further expectations are described in Section 7.