The Italian Survey of Consumer Expectations (ISCE) aims to provide an infrastructure to:
- Elicit high-frequency individual expectations and behaviors
- Perform policy analysis
- Run survey experiments
- Explore methods to elicit expectations and beliefs
The survey builds upon international experiences of online, high-frequency surveys. In
particular, the New York Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) collects information on
consumers' views and expectations regarding inflation, employment, income, and household
finances.
The European Central Bank Consumer Expectation Survey (CES) collects monthly
data on households' expectations from about 20,000 households in 11 euro area economies.
Several other international experiences such as Harvard’s Social Economic Lab which through
surveys explores the determinants of social preferences, attitudes, and perceptions, are also
useful references.
The ISCE sample is drawn from a larger representative panel of 120,000 individuals maintained
and updated regularly by Doxa, a leading statistical research company. The survey targets the
population aged 18-75 residing in Italy using the CAWI method. The planned frequency is
October, January, April, July, avoiding the months of December and August more likely to
reflect high seasonality.
A pilot survey was fielded in September 2023. Wave 1 included 5,007 observations and refers
to October 2023. Wave 2 included 5001 interviews and refers to January 2024. Wave 3 referred
to April 2024 and included 5,005 interviews. Each wave features replenishments ad random
sampling of observations that exit the sample in subsequent waves.
