Unpacking the black box of survey costs

Survey costs are a critically important input to and constraint on the quality of data collected from surveys. Much about survey costs is unknown, leading to lack of understanding of the drivers of survey costs, the relationship between survey costs and survey errors, and difficulty in justifying the importance of survey data versus other available administrative or organic data. This commentary outlines a recently developed typology for survey costs, illustrates this typology using methodological articles that report on costs in pharmacy surveys, and provides recommendations for research on the relationship between fixed and variable costs as a major area for further reporting and research, as well as the relationship between costs and errors.