Household Income and Expenditure 2010

There were three main survey forms used to collect data for the survey. Each question are writen in English and translated in Tuvaluan on the same version of the questionnaire. The questionnaires were designed based on the 2004 survey questionnaire.

HOUSEHOLD FORM

• composition of the household and demographic profile of each members
• dwelling information
• dwelling expenditure
• transport expenditure
• education expenditure
• health expenditure
• land and property expenditure
• household furnishing
• home appliances
• cultural and social payments
• holydays/travel costs
• Loans and saving
• clothing
• other major expenditure items

INDIVIDUAL FORM

• health and education
• labor force (individu aged 15 and above)
• employment activity and income (individu aged 15 and above): wages and salaries, working own business, agriculture and livestock, fishing, income from handicraft, income from gambling, small scale activies, jobs in the last 12 months, other income, childreen income, tobacco and alcohol use, other activities, and seafarer

DIARY (one diary per week, on a 2 weeks period, 2 diaries per household were required)

• All kind of expenses
• Home production - food and drink (eaten by the household, given away, sold)
• Goods taken from own business (consumed, given away)
• Monetary gift (given away, received, winning from gambling)
• Non monetary gift (given away, received, winning from gambling)

Questionnaire Design Flaws
Questionnaire design flaws address any problems with the way questions were worded which will result in an incorrect answer provided by the respondent. Despite every effort to minimize this problem during the design of the respective survey questionnaires and the diaries, problems were still identified during the analysis of the data. Some examples are provided below:

Gifts, Remittances & Donations
Collecting information on the following:

• the receipt and provision of gifts
• the receipt and provision of remittances
• the provision of donations to the church, other communities and family occasions is a very difficult task in a HIES. The extent of these activities in Tuvalu is very high, so every effort should be made to address these activities as best as possible. A key problem lies in identifying the best form (questionnaire or diary) for covering such activities. A general rule of thumb for a HIES is that if the activity occurs on a regular basis, and involves the exchange of small monetary amounts or in-kind gifts, the diary is more appropriate. On the other hand, if the activity is less infrequent, and involves larger sums of money, the questionnaire with a recall approach is preferred. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two for the different activities, and as such, both the diary and questionnaire were used to collect this information. Unfortunately it probably wasn?t made clear enough as to what types of transactions were being collected from the different sources, and as such some transactions might have been missed, and others counted twice. The effects of these problems are hopefully minimal overall.

Defining Remittances
Because people have different interpretations of what constitutes remittances, the questionnaire needs to be very clear as to how this concept is defined in the survey. Unfortunately this wasn?t explained clearly enough so it was difficult to distinguish between a remittance, which should be of a more regular nature, and a one-off monetary gift which was transferred between two households.

Business Expenses Still Recorded
The aim of the survey is to measure "household" expenditure, and as such, any expenditure made by a household for an item or service which was primarily used for a business activity should be excluded. It was not always clear in the questionnaire that this was the case, and as such some business expenses were included. Efforts were made during data cleaning to remove any such business expenses which would impact significantly on survey results.

Purchased goods given away as a gift
When a household makes a gift donation of an item it has purchased, this is recorded in section 5 of the diary. Unfortunately it was difficult to know how to treat these items as it was not clear as to whether this item had been recorded already in section 1 of the diary which covers purchases. The decision was made to exclude all information of gifts given which were considered to be purchases, as these items were assumed to have already been recorded already in section 1. Ideally these items should be treated as a purchased gift given away, which in turn is not household consumption expenditure, but this was not possible.

Some key items missed in the Questionnaire
Although not a big issue, some key expenditure items were omitted from the questionnaire when it would have been best to collect them via this schedule. A key example being electric fans which many households in Tuvalu own.