|
|
| Residential Finance Survey |
|
Clerical Editing and Coding - The homeowner and rental and vacant property questionnaires were received in Jeffersonville, Indiana, National Processing Center. Each questionnaire was screened for completeness, mortgage status, tenure, consistency between expected and actual number of housing units, and determination of whether the property was within the scope of the survey.
After screening, a clerical edit operation was performed to ensure that the proper questionnaire (homeowner or rental) was completed by the respondent, that the answers referred to the sample address, and that all sampled addresses were associated with the correct property. Questionnaires which failed the clerical edit were referred to professional staff at headquarters in Washington for resolution. Upon completion of the clerical edit, questionnaires for nonmortgaged properties were sent to data capture, where the questionnaires were scanned. Images of the questionnaire pages were edited, based on guidelines and limits determined by the Washington staff. Those cases where there were questions which failed an edit were referred to the Washington staff for electronic review online.
Additional clerical edits were performed on questionnaires for mortgaged properties. One of the most important edits was to determine which lender held the mortgage(s) for the property. Prior to the 2001 Residential Finance Survey, a “pre-survey” contact of lenders was conducted. As a result of this survey, a database of approximately 6,000 lenders was established. If a mortgaged property questionnaire listed a lender not on the database, that lender was added to the database. After mortgaged property edits were completed, the questionnaires were forwarded to data capture, where the questionnaires were also scanned and the images of the questionnaire pages edited. The Washington staff also reviewed the mortgaged questionnaires online if the questionnaires failed preliminary edits. Once the lenders were identified for mortgaged properties, they were placed in a mortgage/lender database. This database was used to create and mail out lender questionnaires. If a lender indicated they did not want to receive a paper questionnaire, but wished to respond electronically, a separate database for electronic reporting was created.
Lender questionnaires were returned to Jeffersonville, Indiana. Each questionnaire was screened for completeness and consistency before being sent to data capture, where the questionnaire was scanned. Each questionnaire (homeowner, rental and vacant, and lender) was assigned a unique property address control number. Based on this number, a data file was created by linking the property (homeowner or rental and vacant) questionnaire to the corresponding lender questionnaire(s). After editing this file, professional staff in Washington was able to view the scanned images of the property questionnaire and corresponding lender questionnaire(s) and resolve any discrepancies. The mortgage edit was done to ensure that the property owner and mortgage lender were reporting for the same mortgage and that all mortgages on the property were accounted for.
Specifically, mortgage edit comprised the following activities:
The property owner and mortgage lender were asked a certain number of similar questions about the mortgage on the property. This was done to ensure that both were reporting on the same property and the same mortgage. Cases where the property owner made a complete report about the property, but where the mortgage lender did not report, became eligible for allocation of lender information.
In most cases the allocation of lender information was done by trained and experienced headquarters staff. In a small number of cases involving interest only loans, a computer program was written and the allocation done by computer. In all cases, the allocation of lender information was based on information provided by the property owner. Allocated lender records are identified as such on the computer file.
Computer processing - Three distinct computer edits were performed on the survey data. The first edit made a recheck of selected “key” items to ensure that they were answered. It also made consistency checks for each data record (for example, if the property had two mortgages, there must be two mortgage documents for that property). This edit also checked for duplicate records for the same property. All cases which “failed edit” were reviewed and corrected by professional staff.
The second edit was the allocation edit. In a small number of cases as described above, a lender record was allocated by computer based on information reported by the property owner.
The third computer edit made a final check for internal consistency between items within a data record. For a few individual items, response allocations were made based on this check. In addition, this edit performed a “clean-up” function propr to data tabulation (for example, blanking items which should not have been answered based on the questinnaire “skip” pattern).
The weighting of data (including nonresponse adjustment and ratio estimation) along with the calculation of standard errors, medians, means, and all ratios, and the final tabulation of the data were performed by computer.
