Wellbeing statistics: September 2020 quarter - Data Collection

##Survey content The Wellbeing statistics: September 2020 quarter information release is based on the wellbeing supplement to the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS). An individual in the household completes the HLFS household questionnaire, which collects information about all the usually resident people in that household (eg family relationships). An eligible individual from the household aged 18 years or over is then randomly selected to answer the wellbeing supplement questionnaire (SQ). The wellbeing supplement questionnaire includes topics on: #Personal wellbeing Overall life satisfaction Life worthwhile Self-rated general health Mental wellbeing Generalised trust Institutional trust Family wellbeing Loneliness #Material hardship Material hardship measured using the Dep17 index questions (enforced lack of essentials, economising behaviours, restrictions, financial stress and vulnerability) Financial wellbeing #Housing quality Dampness and mould Heating ##Sample population The wellbeing supplement adopted the same target and survey population from the HLFS September 2020 quarter. An individual was eligible for the wellbeing supplement, if Aged 18 or over and From an 'eligible responding' households and Not a ‘short term visitor’ (not living in NZ for 12 months or more) HLFS non-respondents are automatically considered to be non-respondents in the wellbeing supplement. ##Achieved sample size There was a total of 12,905 usable records for the wellbeing supplement. ##Target sample rate As the wellbeing SQ was taken from the HLFS as a subsample of households which have respondents 18 years or over, its target sample rate is the same as the HLFS target sample rate, which is 76.0%. See Labour Market Statistics: September 2020 quarter. ##Achieved sample rate (ASR) The achieved sample rate for the wellbeing supplement was 82.4%. This is calculated using the weighted numbers of eligible individuals that responded to the wellbeing supplement divided by the total weighted number of individuals sampled within the HLFS. Essentially, this indicates what percentage of the sample responded to the survey. The calibration to the population benchmarks reduced the impact of any bias. Non-response was partly due to the increased burden of it being a supplement to the HLFS, and partly because proxy responses were not accepted. A proxy response is a response by one member of a household on behalf of another. The benchmarks were generated from the eligible responding population of the HLFS. ##Impact of Covid-19 on collection period and response rates Interviewing for the September 2020 quarter ran from July 5th until October 4th. Part way through the quarter, at midday on August 12th, Auckland went into level 3 lockdown. The rest of NZ entered level 2 at the same time. Although the contact centre is based in Auckland, interviewers were able to work from home so there were no days of missed phone interviewing. Face-to-face interviewing was halted for the whole country on August 12th. First-time respondents in the HLFS are typically visited by a field interviewer, but given the shift to higher COVID alert levels, this was unable to happen from August 12th onwards. Instead, letters were sent to first-time households asking them to call Stats NZ. - this is the same approach that was used last quarter when field staff were unable to visit new households due to the nation-wide lockdown. Outside of Auckland, interviewers returned to the field on September 8th. Face-to-face interviewing in Auckland resumed on 15th September, excluding areas which had COVID -19 cases. Although interviewers were back in the field, a cautious approach was taken for the whole country with very few HLFS interviews being done in person on the first few days. Instead, field staff typically knocked on doors to get contact details or left a card with Stats NZ’s phone number in letterboxes. ##Sample design information The wellbeing supplement used the HLFS sample design. The sample was selected using a two-stage stratified cluster design. Households are sampled on a statistically representative random basis from rural and urban areas throughout the North and South Islands. All eligible respondents within the HLFS eligible responding households are eligible for the wellbeing supplement. Every selected household is enumerated via the HLFS household form, which lists all the household members and various demographics such as age, sex and whether the individual is in-scope. One eligible person per household is selected for the wellbeing supplement at random. ##Weights The wellbeing supplement has person level weights attached. ##Reliability of survey estimates (RSE) Data with high sampling errors should be used with caution. Estimates with RSEs between 50 and 100 percent are considered unreliable for most uses and are flagged with double asterisks **. Estimates with RSEs over 100 are also provided and are flagged with triple asterisks ***. They are deemed to not be useful. The absolute sampling errors are available in the published tables. Two types of error are possible in estimates based on a sample survey: sampling error and non-sampling error. Sampling error can be measured and quantifies the variability that occurs by chance because a sample rather than an entire population is surveyed. Non-sampling errors are all errors that are not sampling errors. These errors are not quantifiable and include unintentional mistakes by respondents, variation in the respondent's and interviewer's interpretation of the questions asked, and errors in recording and coding data. We endeavour to minimise the impact of these errors by applying best survey practices and monitoring known indicators (ie non-response). We estimate sampling errors using a jack-knife method, which is based on the variation between estimates and on taking 100 mutually exclusive subsamples from the whole sample. Sampling errors are quoted at the 95 percent confidence level. For example, if the estimated proportion of the population is 20 percent, and the estimate is subject to a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points (measured at the 95 percent confidence level), that shows there is a 95 percent chance the true proportion of the population lies between 18 and 22 percent. High-level checks of the ethnic groups indicate the samples are broadly representative of the population. However, as the size of the sampled group decreases, the relative sampling errors (RSEs – sample error as a percentage of the estimate) will generally increase. For example, estimates for Pacific Peoples would have a larger RSE than those for New Zealand European. ##Suppressed estimates Some estimates are suppressed (replaced by 'S' in the tables) for reliability reasons. These suppressed estimates have a weighted value of less than 1,000 and reflect a low number of responses which are subject to larger relative sampling errors. en-NZ