Our world today is more awash with data than it has ever been, and high-quality data are now indispensable to how leaders, organizations and governments make informed decisions. Good data help us make sense of the world, with the hope of improving it.
But not all data are high-quality, useful or accurate. The volume of poor, unrefined data makes the collection of high-quality data even more valuable in measuring indicators of societal progress. Arguably among the most important such indicators are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs represent an ambitious plan to shape global progress toward closing development gaps and resolving the biggest challenges facing humankind, including poverty, planetary degradation and conflict. The United Nations SDG 2030 Agenda is built on 17 goals, 169 targets and 231 unique indicators, measured at the national level.
Around the world, the responsibility for collecting important national statistics -- such as the indicators of the SDG Agenda -- often falls to National Statistical Offices (NSOs). These agencies are tasked with collecting, analyzing and communicating high-quality data, and they play a key role in shaping how governments make decisions that ultimately affect us all.
Yet many NSOs are under mounting pressure as the demand for high-quality statistics grows. This is particularly true in lower-income countries, where NSOs often struggle to balance competing priorities with greater financial, time and human-resource constraints.
Private-sector organizations like Gallup are increasingly helping to “bridge the data gap” in the collection of official statistics. In practice, “bridging the gap” can mean different things, including collecting data in years when NSO data are not available; developing and mainstreaming new indicators; validating existing measurement frameworks; running experiments to optimize data collection; and measuring hard-to-reach populations.
The World Poll lies at the heart of Gallup’s efforts to support the collection of official statistics. The World Poll -- conducted annually -- is one of the largest nationally representative surveys in the world and tracks a range of important issues related to how people’s lives are going.
The World Poll infrastructure has been used by institutions including the United Nations and the World Bank to support the monitoring of progress on SDG indicators:
- Financial Inclusion (SDG 8.10.2) on behalf of the World Bank
- Food Insecurity (SDG 2.1.2) on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- Modern Slavery (SDG 8.7) on behalf of the International Labour Organization
Assurances of data quality and adherence to ethical standards are paramount to preserving the credibility of official statistics gathered through partnership with the private sector. As such, Gallup’s partnerships are based on a firm commitment to the principles of methodological rigor, transparency and respondent confidentiality. With nearly 90 years of experience in survey research, Gallup has developed consistent processes, protocols and systems based on internationally recognized guidelines to ensure quality, transparency and reliability in the data it collects.
Public-private partnerships are valuable not only in supporting the collection of official statistics, but also in helping to support and strengthen the statistical ecosystem more broadly. Gallup partners with a wide array of local research partners worldwide to collect data. These partnerships help disseminate best-practice methods, survey infrastructure and quality-control processes to parts of the world with more limited survey research capacity.
The private sector has a key role to play in measuring some of the most pressing issues of our time. When done properly -- with the principles of rigor, transparency and research ethics at their core -- the private sector can help drive accountability for global organizations seeking to change the world for the better.
Read more in Bridging the gap: Gallup’s role supporting the official statistics ecosystem, published recently in the Statistical Journal of the International Association for Official Statistics.
