Sources of Non-Official UK Statistics, 5th edition

Originally published in 2002 in The Business Economist, volume 33, issue 2. The original publication day is unrecorded.

David Mort, Gower, 2002, xi +358 pages, £67.50.

From The Business Economist, volume 33, issue 2 (2002).

Coming two years after the previous edition (reviewed in The Business Economist, Vol 31, No 2) with various changes – title from ‘Unofficial’ to ‘Non-official’, disappearance of collaborator Wendy Wilkins, cover colour from black and red to blue, page size enlarged from 155 x 233mm to 168 x 244mm (wonder why?), organisations from around 460 to 430, items listed from 884 to 877, – the contents are basically the mixture as before, including the suppression cop-out, ex-directory caveat “some publishers asked to be excluded from the directory, and we have agreed to this request”. What is unfortunately not mentioned is the number of ‘publishers’ approached who either did not reply (a common impediment with surveys) or revealed that they did not include statistics among their activities.

One of the areas of interest to students of market and industrial structure statistics – trade associations – is now a little more ‘organised’ and documented under the umbrella of the recently-formed ‘Trade Association Forum’ (www.taforum.org) which has published a third survey on the sector. The second survey reported that among the services which associations offer is ‘statistics’; 70 per cent (98?) of the 140 respondents report this as amongst their activities. In contrast, Mort lists some 130 associations, only 46 of which feature in the TA Forum survey – just shows how difficult it is to pin down. Other sources for identifying statistics-supplying TAs are the two more comprehensive directories which include trade associations and differ in their detailed coverage – Directory of British Associations, now in its 15th edition (CBD Research Ltd) and Trade Associations and Professional Bodies UK, 16th edition (Gale Research International Ltd).

Mort’s book includes website and e-mail addresses, one of the most informative of which (item 507) is that of IRN Services Ltd (of which Mort is a director), which shows links to over 600 non-governmental statistics sites. The book also includes the SBE’s annual Salary Survey and the monthly Economic Outlook and Interest Rate Surveys. Bliss.

All in all, a handy reference work but the non-official organisations have some way to go on the metadata and quality assurance fronts being developed by their official brethren. But then non-official statistics don’t receive the same critical media coverage as the Average Earnings Index or the quarterly GDP or suffer the attentions of the Statistics Commission.

Archived source: 2002-08-30 website capture.