Sampling Procedure
The sample includes 2387 establishments: 1891 enterprises have at least 5 full-time employees and 496 are micro establishments with less than 5 full-time workers.
The sample for enterprises with more than four employees was designed using stratified random sampling with strata defined by region, sector and firm size.
Establishments located in 11 states - Abia, Anambra, Abuja, Bauchi, Cross Rivers, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Ogun and Sokoto - were interviewed.
Following the ISIC (revision 3.1) classification, the following industries were targeted: all manufacturing sectors (group D), construction (group F), retail and wholesale services (subgroups 52 and 51 of group G), hotels and restaurants (group H), transport, storage, and communications (group I), and computer and related activities (sub-group 72 of group K). For establishments with five or more full-time permanent paid employees, this universe was stratified according to the following categories of industry:
1. Manufacturing: Food and Beverages (Group D, sub-group 15);
2. Manufacturing: Garments (Group D, sub group 18);
3. Manufacturing: Other Manufacturing (Group D excluding sub-groups 15 and 18);
4. Retail Trade: (Group G, sub-group 52);
5. Rest of the universe, including:
• Construction (Group F);
• Wholesale trade (Group G, sub-group 51);
• Hotels, bars and restaurants (Group H);
• Transportation, storage and communications (Group I);
• Computer related activities (Group K, sub-group 72).
Size stratification was defined following the standardized definition used for the Enterprise Surveys: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (more than 99 employees). For stratification purposes, the number of employees was defined on the basis of reported permanent full-time workers.
The sampling frame of establishments with 5 employees and more was built with lists sourced from the Nigeria Manufacturer Association, the National Bureau of Statistics in Abia, Anambra, Abuja, Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Lagos, the ministry of commerce and industry in Ogun, Kano, Bauchi, and from the Abuja Business Directory, the Sokoto Business Directory. This master list was used to set the target sample size for each stratum. During the survey period, the list was updated as new information regarding establishments that had closed or were out-of-scope was gathered. The final population size in all strata and locations was 771018 with the vast majority of establishments operating in the micro and manufacturing strata. The sample (including the entire rest of universe and retail sample in each state) was selected at random from the master list by a computer program.
In this survey, the micro establishment stratum covers all establishments of the targeted categories of economic activity with less than 5 employees. The implementing agency (EEC Canada) selected an aerial sampling approach to estimate the population of establishments and select the sample in this stratum for all states of the survey.
First, to randomly select individual micro establishments for surveying, the following procedure was followed: i) select districts and specific zones of each district where there was a high concentration of micro establishments; ii) count all micro establishments in these specific zones; iii) based on this count, create a virtual list and select establishments at random from that virtual list; and iv) based on the ratio between the number selected in each specific zone and the total population in that zone, create and apply a skip rule for selecting establishments in that zone.
The districts and the specific zones were selected at first according to local sources. The EEC team then went in the field to verify the sources and to count micro establishments. Once the count for each zone was completed, the numbers were sent back to EEC head office in Montreal.
At the head office, the count by zone was converted into one list of sequential numbers for the whole survey region, and a computer program performed a random selection of the determined number of establishments from the list. Then, based on the number that the computer selected in each specific zone, a skip rule was defined to select micro establishments to survey in that zone. The skip rule for each zone was sent back to the EEC field team.
In Nigeria, enumerators were sent to each zone with instructions how to apply the skip rule defined for that zone as well as how to select replacements in the event of a refusal or other cause of non-participation.