Irish National Survey of Housing Quality (NHSQ), 2001-2002

The Irish National Survey of Housing Quality (NSHQ) was conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute in 2001/2002 on behalf of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The purpose of the survey was to record very detailed information on the condition of the national housing stock. One of the requirements of the survey was to provide a database to the Department with a large enough sample to yield separate breakdowns at local authority level. The NSHQ completed sample size was over 40,000 households throughout the country. The overall response rate was 75 per cent. Sample weights are constructed to ensure that the sample is representative of the population along a number of key dimensions, such as region, household size, labour force participation, age of dwelling and so on. These weights adjust the sample for any lack of overall representativeness arising from sample design, the sampling frame available and patterns of non-response.