Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2006
Nauru, 2006
Identification
NRU_2006_HIES_v01_M
Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2006
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Nauru | NRU |
Income/Expenditure/Household Survey [hh/ies]
Whilst income and expenditure information was collected from a random sample of households in the mid 1990's, this information was not fully exploited and was mainly utilised to update base salaries for the public service. It would therefore be safe to say that the 2006 HIES was the first official HIES conducted in Nauru.
The purpose of the HIES survey is to obtain information on the income, consumption pattern, incidence of poverty, and saving propensities for different groups of people in Nauru. This information will be used to guide policy makers in framing socio-economic developmental policies and in initiating financial measures for improving economic conditions of the people.
Some more specific outputs from the survey are listed below:
a) To obtain expenditure weights and other useful data for the revision of the consumer price index;
b) To supplement the data available for use in compiling official estimates of household accounts in the systems of national accounts;
c) To supply basic data needed for policy making in connection with social and economic planning;
d) To provide data for assessing the impact on household living conditions of existing or proposed economic and social measures, particularly changes in the structure of household expenditures and in household consumption;
e) To gather information on poverty lines and incidence of poverty throughout Nauru.
Sample survey data [ssd]
- Household
- Person
- Expenditure Commodity
Version
Version 01: Edited data, second version for internal use only - not anonymised. Used for basic survey reports.
2007-04-01
Scope
The scope of the 2006 Nauru HIES includes:
Expenditure Information File: This component has 12 sections covering:
- Household Identifiers
- Basic demographics
- Food and non-alcoholic drinks (Exp)
- Alcohol & Tobacco (Exp)
- Clothing & Footwear (Exp)
- Housing (Exp)
- Household Maintenance (Exp)
- Transport & Communication (Exp)
- Services (Exp)
- Imputed Rent (Exp)
- Gifts Given (Exp)
- Gifts Received (Exp)
Income Information: This component has 12 sections covering:
- Household Identifiers
- Basic demographics
- Wages & Salary (Inc)
- Subsistence Income (Inc)
- Business Income (Inc)
- Previous Jobs (Inc)
- Services (Inc)
- Benefits (Inc)
- Other Income (Inc)
- Imputed Rent (Inc)
- Home Produce - Consumed (Inc)
- Home Produce - Gifts Given (Inc)
| Topic | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| Poverty | World Bank |
| Income & Expenditure | World Bank |
Coverage
National
The survey covered all private households on the island of Nauru. When the survey was in the field, interviewers were further required to reduce the scope by removing those households which had not been residing in Nauru for the last 12 months and did not intend to stay in Nauru for the next 12 months.
Persons living in special dwellings (Hospital, Prison, etc) were not included in the survey.
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Nauru Bureau of Statistics | Ministry of Finance |
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Secretariat of the Pacific Community | CROP Regional Organisation | Sample design, questionnaire design, field staff training, data processing, and data analysis |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Australian Agency for International Development | Financial assistance |
| Asian Development Bank | Financial assistance |
Sampling
The sample size adopted for the survey was 500 households which allowed for expected sample loss, whilst still maintaining a suitable responding sample for the analysis.
Before the sample was selected, the population was stratified by constituency in order to assist with the logistical issues associated with the fieldwork. There were eight constituencies in total, along with "Location" which stretches across the districts of Denigamodu and Aiwo, forming nine strata in total. Although constituency level analysis was not a priority for the survey, sample sizes within each stratum were kept to a minimum of 40 households, to enable some basic forms of analysis at this level if required.
The sample selection procedure within each stratum was then to sort each household on the frame by household size (number of people), and then run a systematic skip through the list in order to achieve the desirable sample size.
No deviations from the sample design took place.
The survey response rates were a lot lower than expected, especially in some districts. The district of Aiwo, Uaboe and Denigomodu had the lowest response rates with 16.7%, 20.0% and 34.8% respectively. The area of Location was also extremely low with a responses rate of 32.2%. On a more positive note, the districts of Yaren, Ewa, Anabar, Ijuw and Anibare all had response rates at 80.0% or better.
The major contributing factor to the low response rates were households refusing to take part in the survey. The figures for responding above only include fully responding households, and given there were many partial responses, this also brought the values down. The other significant contributing factor to the low response rates was the interviewers not being able to make contact with the household during the survey period.
Unfortunately, not only do low response rates often increase the sampling error of the survey estimates, because the final sample is smaller, it will also introduce response bias into the final estimates. Response bias takes place when the households responding to the survey possess different characteristics to the households not responding, thus generating different results to what would have been achieved if all selected households responded. It is extremely difficult to measure the impact of the non-response bias, as little information is generally known about the non-responding households in the survey. For the Nauru 2006 HIES however, it was noted during the fieldwork that a higher proportion of the Chinese population residing in Nauru were more likely to not respond. Given it is expected their income and expenditure patterns would differ from the rest of the population, this would contribute to the magnitude of the bias.
Household weights for the analysis were derived by dividing the known population of households from the sample frame for each stratum, by the responding sample for those strata.
Survey instrument
The survey schedules adopted for the HIES included the following:
· Expenditure questionnaire
· Income questionnaire
· Miscellaneous questionnaire
· Diary (x2)
Whilst a Household Control Form collecting basic demographics is also normally included with the survey, this wasn't required for this HIES as this activity took place for all households in the mini census.
Information collected in the four schedules covered the following:
Expenditure questionnaire: Covers basic details about the dwelling structure and its access to things like water and sanitation. It was also used as the vehicle to collect expenditure on major and infrequent expenditures incurred by the household.
Income questionnaire: Covers each of the main types of household income generated by the household such as wages and salaries, business income and income from subsistence activities.
Miscellaneous questionnaire: Covers topics relating to health access, labour force status and education.
Diary: Covers all day to day expenditures incurred by the household, consumption of items produced by the household such as fish and crops, and gifts both received and given by the household.
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2006-11-09 | 2006-11-28 | 2 week diary keeping period |
| Start date | End date |
|---|---|
| 2005-11-09 | 2006-11-09 |
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Nauru Bureau of Statistics | Ministry of Finance |
The supervision of field work took place at 2 levels:
Overall Supervision: 3 staff from the Nauru Bureau of Statistics oversaw the work of the 9 field supervisors. They mainly remained in the office but made some field visits at times to monitor field progress
Field Supervisers: 9 field supervisors were hired to provide the immediate supervision to 37 field interviewers. There tasks were to check all survey materials before it was returned to the Bureau of Statistics and answer any queries that the interviewers may have during data collection
The staff involved in the survey comprised of the three permanent staff of the NSO, nine field supervisors and 37 field enumerators. Each interviewer was allocated between 10 and 12 households each to enumerate over the two week period. For the expenditure questionnaire, income questionnaire and miscellaneous questionnaire, a face-to-face interview was conducted with the household to capture the information. For the two diaries, the diary was left with the household who were then responsible for recording all their expenditures over the two-week diary keeping period.
Data processing
There were 3 phases to the editing process for the 2006 Nauru HIES which included:
- Data Verification operations
- Data Editing operations
- Data Auditing operations
For more information on what each phase entailed go the document HIES Processing Instructions attached to this documentation.
Data appraisal
To determine the impact of sampling error on the survey results, relative standard errors (RSEs) for key estimates were produced. When interpreting these results, one must remember that these figures don't include any of the non-sampling errors discussed in other sections of this documentation
To also provide a rough guide on how to interpret the RSEs provided in the main report, the following information can be used:
Category Description
RSE < 5% Estimate can be regarded as very reliable
5% < RSE < 10% Estimate can be regarded as good and usable
10% < RSE < 25% Estimate can be considered usable, with caution
RSE > 25% Estimate should only be used with extreme cautionThe actual RSEs for the key estimates can be found in Section 4.1 of the main report
As can be seen from these tables, the estimates for Total Income and Total Expenditure from the HIES can be considered to be very good, from a sampling error perspective. The same can also be said for the Wage and Salary estimate in income and the Food estimate in expenditure, which make up a high proportion of each respective group.
Many of the other estimates should be used with caution, depending on the magnitude of their RSE. Some of these high RSEs are to be expected, due to the expected degree of variability for how households would report for these items. For example, with Business Income (RSE 56.8%), most households would report no business income as no household members undertook this activity, whereas other households would report large business incomes as it's their main source of income.
Other than the non-response issues discussed in this documentation, other quality issues were identified which included:
- Reporting errors
Some of the different aspects contributing to the reporting errors generated from the survey, with some examples/explanations for each, include the following:
a) Misinterpretation of survey questions: A common mistake which takes place when conducting a survey is that the person responding to the questionnaire may interpret a question differently to the interviewer, who in turn may have interpreted the question differently to the people who designed the questionnaire. Some examples of this for a HIES can include people providing answers in dollars and cents, instead of just dollars, or the reference/recall period for an “income” or “expenditure” is misunderstood. These errors can often see reported amounts out by a factor of 10 or even 100, which can have major impacts on final results.
b) Recall problems for the questionnaire information: The majority of questions in both of the income and expenditure questionnaires require the respondent to recall what took place over a 12 month period. As would be expected, people will often forget what took place up to 12 months ago so some information will be forgotten.
c) Intentional under-reporting for some items: For whatever reasons, a household may still participate in a survey but not be willing to provide accurate responses for some questions. Examples for a HIES include people not fully disclosing their total income, and intentionally under-reporting expenditures on items such as alcohol and tobacco.
d) Accidental under-reporting in the household diaries: Although the two diaries are left with the household for a period of two weeks, it is easy for the household to forget to enter all expenditures throughout this period - this problem most likely increases as the two week period progresses. It is also expected that for section 2 in the diary which collects consumption of home produce by the household, the extent of under-reporting will potentially be even higher.
- Data entry errors
Despite best efforts to keep reporting errors to a minimum, errors can also occur during the data entry phase of the survey. Once again amounts reported as dollars and cents can get entered as whole dollars, and accidental keying mistakes can be a common occurrence. Data entry range checks are often used to keep these mistakes to a minimum, and naturally data editing takes place both during and after data entry, but errors still occur which go undetected.
Data Access
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director of Statisitics | Nauru Bureau of Statistics (NBOS) | http://www.spc.int/prism/country/nr/stats/ | statistics@naurugov.nr |
The Data is made available under the following conditions:
- The data will be specifically used for statistical and scientific research purpose ONLY.
- The data is not sold or re-distributed to any other individual, institution or organisation.
- Adhereing to the confidentiality clause in the Act as well as the Agreement.
- The source has to be acknowledged in all modes of presentation, books, articles, papers, theses, reports or any other publication.
- A copy of all reports, publications and presentations are to be forwarded to the owner of the data.
Use of the dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the Identification of the Primary Investigator
- the title of the survey (including country, acronym and year of implementation)
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download
Example:
Nauru Bureau of Statistics. Nauru Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2006. Ref. NRU_2006_HIES_v01_M. Dataset downloaded from [source] on [date].
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director of Statistics | Nauru Bureau of Statistics (NBOS) | statistics@naurugov.nr | http://www.spc.int/prism/country/nr/stats/ |
Metadata production
DDI_NRU_2006_HIES_v01_M
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Chris Ryan | SPC - Statistics for Development | Documentation of the survey |
| Accelerated Data Program | International Household Survey Network | Editing for the IHSN Survey Catalog |
2012-07-16
Metadata version
Version 01 (July 2012). First documentation of HIES 2006 using the IHSN Toolkit. This is the edited version of the documentation produced during the July 2012 workshop in Guam.