Expenditure and Consumption Survey, PECS 1995/1996 - Palestine

Abstract --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE PALESTINIAN CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS The basic goal of the Household and Consumption Survey is to provide a necessary database for formulating national policies at various levels. This survey provides the contribution of the household sector to the Gross National Product (GNP). It determines the incidence of poverty, and provides weighted data which reflects the relative importance of the consumption items to be employed in determining the benchmark for rates and prices of items and services. Furthermore, this survey is a fundamental cornerstone in the process of studying the nutritional status in the Palestinian territory. The raw survey data provided by the Statistical Agency were cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major project that started in 2009. During which extensive efforts have been exerted to acquire, clean, harmonize, preserve and disseminate micro data of existing household surveys in several Arab countries. Geographic coverage --------------------------- The target population in the sample survey comprises all households living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, excluding nomads and students. Analysis unit --------------------------- 1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person. Universe --------------------------- The survey covered a national sample of households and all permanently residing individuals in surveyed households. Kind of data --------------------------- Sample survey data [ssd] Sampling procedure --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE PALESTINIAN CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS Sample and Frame: ============ In the absence of a population census since 1967, the major task, with regard to constructing master sample, was developing a frame of suitable units covering the whole country. Such units have been used as the PSUs (Primary Sampling Units) in the first stage of selection. For the second stage of selection, all PSUs have been listed in the field at the household level. This provided a sampling frame for selecting the households. Sample design: ========== The sample design is, therefore, a stratified two-stage design for households selected to be interviewed. Four levels of stratification have been made: 1. Stratification by District. 2. Stratification by place of residence, which comprises: (a) Municipalities (b) Villages (C) refugees camps 3. Stratification by locality size 4. Stratification by cell identification in that order Sample size: ======== The sample size is about 4893 households allowing for non-response and related losses. Target cluster size: ============ The target cluster size or "sample-take" is the average number of households to be selected per PSU. In this survey, the sample take is around 10 households. Detailed information/formulas on the sampling design are available in the user manual. Sampling deviation --------------------------- The standard errors for the main survey estimates were calculated to give the user an idea of their reliability or precision. Whereas, the variance was calculated using the method of ultimate clusters within any domain of estimation. Detailed information on the sampling design deviation and calculation of the variance is available in the user manual. Mode of data collection --------------------------- Face-to-face [f2f] Research instrument --------------------------- The PECS questionnaire consists of two main sections: First section: Certain articles / provisions of the form filled at the beginning of the month, and the remainder filled out at the end of the month. The questionnaire includes the following provisions: Cover sheet: It contains detailed and particulars of the family, date of visit, particular of the field/office work team, number/sex of the family members. Statement of the family members: Contains social, economic and demographic particulars of the selected family. Statement of the long-lasting commodities and income generation activities: Includes a number of basic and indispensable items (i.e, Livestock, or agricultural lands). Housing Characteristics: Includes information and data pertaining to the housing conditions, including type of shelter, number of rooms, ownership, rent, water, electricity supply, connection to the sewer system, source of cooking and heating fuel, and remoteness/proximity of the house to education and health facilities. Monthly and Annual Income: Data pertaining to the income of the family is collected from different sources at the end of the registration / recording period. Second section: The second section of the questionnaire includes a list of 54 consumption and expenditure groups itemized and serially numbered according to its importance to the family. Each of these groups contains important commodities. The number of commodities items in each for all groups stood at 707 commodities and services items. Groups 1-21 include food, drink, and cigarettes. Group 22 includes homemade commodities. Groups 23-45 include all items except for food, drink and cigarettes. Groups 50-54 include all of the long-lasting commodities. Data on each of these groups was collected over different intervals of time so as to reflect expenditure over a period of one full year. Cleaning operations --------------------------- Raw Data ======= Harmonized Data ============ - The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) is used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process starts with cleaning all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency. - Cleaned data files are then all merged to produce one data file on the individual level containing all variables subject to harmonization. - A country-specific program is generated for each dataset to generate/ compute/ recode/ rename/ format/ label harmonized variables. - A post-harmonization cleaning process is then conducted on the data. - Harmonized data is saved on the household as well as the individual level, in SPSS and converted to STATA format. Response rate --------------------------- Excluding the uninhabited housing units, the survey sample is (4806) households, from which (3422) households are in the West Bank, and (1384) households are in Gaza Strip. A total of (4584) households completed the questionnaire: (3213) household in the West bank and (1335) households in Gaza Strip. The non-response rate is, accordingly, 5.7% for all the Palestinian territory. Sampling error estimates --------------------------- Generally, surveys samples are exposed to two types of errors. The statistical errors, being the first type, result from studying a part of a certain society and not including all its sections. And since the Household Expenditure and Consumption Surveys are conducted using a sample method, statistical errors are then unavoidable. Therefore, a potential sample using a suitable design has been employed whereby each unit of the society has a high chance of selection. Upon calculating the rate of bias in this survey, it appeared that the data is of high quality. The second type of errors is the non-statistical errors that relate to the design of the survey, mechanisms of data collection, and management and analysis of data. Members of the work commission were trained on all possible mechanisms to tackle such potential problems, as well as on how to address cases in which there were no responses (representing 3.1%).