Labor Force Survey 1998-1999

The survey was spread over a complete 12 months. On the advice of the NLFS steering committee, it was decided to split the annual sample into three sub-groups, each one representing four months in the Nepalese calendar.

Fieldwork continued throughout the first 11 months of the survey year, but then had to be curtailed in mid-April 1999 because of an impending national election. The few remaining PSUs were covered at the end of May, once election activities were completed.

Although extensive cartographic work had already been done in connection with the NLSS, the staff of NLFS carried out further cartographic work where it was considered necessary, so as to establish clear boundaries for the selected areas.

Training
Some 18 supervisors underwent a week's training in Kathmandu, covering such issues as locating the sample area and identifying the boundaries, the listing operation, the selection of households, gaining the co-operation of respondents, quality control, supervising field operations and checking completed questionnaires, and liaising with headquarters. At the specific request of UNDP, ILO arranged for a consultant to give two sessions on gender issues relevant to the survey.

This supervisor training was then followed by a three-week training course for supervisors and enumerators together. Because of the large numbers involved (20 supervisors plus 55 enumerators, allowing for some reserves), three separate training classes were run simultaneously. Two days were spent in discussion of the interviewer's duties and general issues relating to the fieldwork, and a further three days in clarifying the key concepts used in labour force surveys. Only after that did the classes move into detailed discussion of the questionnaire. As with the supervisor training, two sessions were again devoted to discussing gender issues. Towards the end of the training class all field staff spent a day in the field, with each person being required to interview one urban and one rural household. The final day was spent on a debriefing of this fieldwork exercise.

A short questionnaire was administered towards the end of the training, to evaluate the quality of the training courses and find out which aspects were still unclear, and the results were used on the final day to re-emphasize certain points.

Carrying out a survey in Nepal is a major challenge because of the terrain. To give some idea of the nature of the difficulties involved, it is worth noting that as many as 15 of the 75 district capitals cannot be reached at all by road. Visitors are forced to walk there or fly in. Many areas in Nepal, particularly in the mountains, are extremely remote, and interviewers must often walk long distances. The interviewers were therefore provided with military style backpacks. However, because of their appearance, local authorities and householders sometimes mistook them for Maoist terrorists. Indeed, in one instance which reached the national press, one team was briefly imprisoned (despite showing their identification) and were only released after the Director-General of CBS had intervened personally. In some cases fears that the team might be Maoists led to refusals to give them accommodation in the survey area.

In designing the survey, there was a concern to keep interviews to a manageable length. There was an obvious desire not to impose unnecessarily on household members, who were giving freely of their time in responding to the questions asked. There was also the consideration that the interviews within each household should not take too long, so that interviewers could complete their work load of 20 households and move on to the next PSU. In practice, interviews with each selected person normally took about 20 minutes, with the result that interviews with the whole household were usually completed within two hours. Only in exceptional circumstances where a household was very large would it take longer than two hours to complete one household.

Reference Period
In collecting data on work activities, two reference periods (short and long) have been used. A week (i.e. the seven days leading up to the interview) has been used as the short reference period, and a year as the long reference period. The short reference period is used to measure current activity, while the long period is used to measure usual activity. For many people (for instance in the case of those in government service) the main economic activity of the short period will probably be the same as the usual activity of the longer period, unless they have recently changed their jobs. In other situations (as for instance with seasonal agricultural workers) this will not be the case.