Annual Business Survey Statistics Survey

The Annual Business Survey (ABS) is the main structural business survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the Non-Financial Business Economy. The financial variables covered include turnover, purchases and approximate Gross Value Added (GVA).

Last updated:
1 February 2016

Background

To help us better understand your needs, we ran a survey to get feedback on your use of Annual Business Survey (ABS) statistics. The survey ran from June - August 2015.

We asked

How can we improve the Annual Business Survey statistics?

You said

  • All of you were very satisfied or satisfied with the layout of our statistical bulletins

  • The majority of you were very satisfied with the level of detail of our statistical bulletins

  • The majority of you were very satisfied or satisfied with the ease of access and the relevance to their needs of our statistical bulletins.

  • The majority of you had not used the interactive tools

  • The majority of you did not find twitter a useful communication tool

  • You wanted to see employment counts and employment costs data features in the commentary

  • You wanted more commentary on manufacturing and high-value engineering

  • You wanted us to produce an interactive tool covering the whole ABS time series

  • Some of you wanted further regional breakdowns of ABS data

We did

  • Look to incorporate links to the latest BRES release into our statistical bulletins, so that you can easily access employment counts and employment costs data

  • Decide to publish a series of short stories over the next year focusing in detail on the different sectors that the ABS covers, including manufacturing and high-value engineering.

  • Decide to investigate developing an interactive tool covering the whole ABS time series to add to our existing interactive tools, such as the ABS Coffee Wheel and the Regional Trade Map

  • Highlight that we release regional estimates for ABS every year, and that we can share access to data at lower geographical levels on request, subject to disclosure controls. Please see our Guidance and Methodology pages for further details

  • Promote access to our data explorer tool more widely

  • Continue to use Twitter to communicate our statistics to a wider audience, whilst noting that it is not an ideal channel for some of our core users

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