Abstract

The main objective of the HEIS survey is to obtain detailed data on household expenditure and income, linked to various demographic and socio-economic variables, to enable computation of poverty indices and determine the characteristics of the poor and prepare poverty maps. Therefore, to achieve these goals, the sample had to be representative on the sub-district level. The raw survey data provided by the Statistical Office was cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major research project to develop and expand knowledge on equity and inequality in the Arab region. The main focus of the project is to measure the magnitude and direction of change in inequality and to understand the complex contributing social, political and economic forces influencing its levels. However, the measurement and analysis of the magnitude and direction of change in this inequality cannot be consistently carried out without harmonized and comparable micro-level data on income and expenditures. Therefore, one important component of this research project is securing and harmonizing household surveys from as many countries in the region as possible, adhering to international statistics on household living standards distribution. Once the dataset has been compiled, the Economic Research Forum makes it available, subject to confidentiality agreements, to all researchers and institutions concerned with data collection and issues of inequality.

Data collected through the survey helped in achieving the following objectives: 1. Provide data weights that reflect the relative importance of consumer expenditure items used in the preparation of the consumer price index 2. Study the consumer expenditure pattern prevailing in the society and the impact of demographic and socio-economic variables on those patterns 3. Calculate the average annual income of the household and the individual, and assess the relationship between income and different economic and social factors, such as profession and educational level of the head of the household and other indicators 4. Study the distribution of individuals and households by income and expenditure categories and analyze the factors associated with it 5. Provide the necessary data for the national accounts related to overall consumption and income of the household sector 6. Provide the necessary income data to serve in calculating poverty indices and identifying the poor characteristics as well as drawing poverty maps 7. Provide the data necessary for the formulation, follow-up and evaluation of economic and social development programs, including those addressed to eradicate poverty

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

• Households
• Individuals

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The Household Expenditure and Income survey sample for 2010, was designed to serve the basic objectives of the survey through providing a relatively large sample in each sub-district to enable drawing a poverty map in Jordan. The General Census of Population and Housing in 2004 provided a detailed framework for housing and households for different administrative levels in the country. Jordan is administratively divided into 12 governorates, each governorate is composed of a number of districts, each district (Liwa) includes one or more sub-district (Qada). In each sub-district, there are a number of communities (cities and villages). Each community was divided into a number of blocks. Where in each block, the number of houses ranged between 60 and 100 houses. Nomads, persons living in collective dwellings such as hotels, hospitals and prison were excluded from the survey framework.

A two stage stratified cluster sampling technique was used. In the first stage, a cluster sample proportional to the size was uniformly selected, where the number of households in each cluster was considered the weight of the cluster. At the second stage, a sample of 8 households was selected from each cluster, in addition to another 4 households selected as a backup for the basic sample, using a systematic sampling technique. Those 4 households were sampled to be used during the first visit to the block in case the visit to the original household selected is not possible for any reason. For the purposes of this survey, each sub-district was considered a separate stratum to ensure the possibility of producing results on the sub-district level. In this respect, the survey framework adopted that provided by the General Census of Population and Housing Census in dividing the sample strata. To estimate the sample size, the coefficient of variation and the design effect of the expenditure variable provided in the Household Expenditure and Income Survey for the year 2008 was calculated for each sub-district. These results were used to estimate the sample size on the sub-district level so that the coefficient of variation for the expenditure variable in each sub-district is less than 10%, at a minimum, of the number of clusters in the same sub-district (6 clusters). This is to ensure adequate presentation of clusters in different administrative areas to enable drawing an indicative poverty map.

It should be noted that in addition to the standard non response rate assumed, higher rates were expected in areas where poor households are concentrated in major cities. Therefore, those were taken into consideration during the sampling design phase, and a higher number of households were selected from those areas, aiming at well covering all regions where poverty spreads.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

• General form
• Expenditure on food commodities form
• Expenditure on non-food commodities form

Cleaning operations

Raw Data: - Organizing forms/questionnaires: A compatible archive system was used to classify the forms according to different rounds throughout the year. A registry was prepared to indicate different stages of the process of data checking, coding and entry till forms were back to the archive system. - Data office checking: This phase was achieved concurrently with the data collection phase in the field where questionnaires completed in the field were immediately sent to data office checking phase. - Data coding: A team was trained to work on the data coding phase, which in this survey is only limited to education specialization, profession and economic activity. In this respect, international classifications were used, while for the rest of the questions, coding was predefined during the design phase. - Data entry/validation: A team consisting of system analysts, programmers and data entry personnel were working on the data at this stage. System analysts and programmers started by identifying the survey framework and questionnaire fields to help build computerized data entry forms. A set of validation rules were added to the entry form to ensure accuracy of data entered. A team was then trained to complete the data entry process. Forms prepared for data entry were provided by the archive department to ensure forms are correctly extracted and put back in the archive system. A data validation process was run on the data to ensure the data entered is free of errors. - Results tabulation and dissemination: After the completion of all data processing operations, ORACLE was used to tabulate the survey final results. Those results were further checked using similar outputs from SPSS to ensure that tabulations produced were correct. A check was also run on each table to guarantee consistency of figures presented, together with required editing for tables' titles and report formatting.

Harmonized Data: - The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process started with cleaning all raw data files received from the Statistical Office. - Cleaned data files were then merged to produce one data file on the individual level containing all variables subject to harmonization. - A country-specific program was generated for each dataset to generate/compute/recode/rename/format/label harmonized variables. - A post-harmonization cleaning process was run on the data. - Harmonized data was saved on the household as well as the individual level, in SPSS and converted to STATA format.

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 CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS)

In any society, the human element represents the basis of the work force which exercises all the service and production activities. Therefore, it is a mandate to produce labor force statistics and studies, that is related to the growth and distribution of manpower and labor force distribution by different types and characteristics.

In this context, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics conducts "Quarterly Labor Force Survey" which includes data on the size of manpower and labor force (employed and unemployed) and their geographical distribution by their characteristics.

By the end of each year, CAPMAS issues the annual aggregated labor force bulletin publication that includes the results of the quarterly survey rounds that represent the manpower and labor force characteristics during the year.

----> Historical Review of the Labor Force Survey:

1- The First Labor Force survey was undertaken in 1957. The first round was conducted in November of that year, the survey continued to be conducted in successive rounds (quarterly, bi-annually, or annually) till now.

2- Starting the October 2006 round, the fieldwork of the labor force survey was developed to focus on the following two points: a. The importance of using the panel sample that is part of the survey sample, to monitor the dynamic changes of the labor market. b. Improving the used questionnaire to include more questions, that help in better defining of relationship to labor force of each household member (employed, unemployed, out of labor force ...etc.). In addition to re-order of some of the already existing questions in much logical way.

3- Starting the January 2008 round, the used methodology was developed to collect more representative sample during the survey year. this is done through distributing the sample of each governorate into five groups, the questionnaires are collected from each of them separately every 15 days for 3 months (in the middle and the end of the month)

----> The survey aims at covering the following topics:

1- Measuring the size of the Egyptian labor force among civilians (for all governorates of the republic) by their different characteristics. 2- Measuring the employment rate at national level and different geographical areas. 3- Measuring the distribution of employed people by the following characteristics: gender, age, educational status, occupation, economic activity, and sector. 4- Measuring unemployment rate at different geographic areas. 5- Measuring the distribution of unemployed people by the following characteristics: gender, age, educational status, unemployment type "ever employed/never employed", occupation, economic activity, and sector for people who have ever worked.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a sample of urban and rural areas in all the governorates.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing 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 CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS)

----> Sample Design and Selection

The sample of the LFS 2006 survey is a simple systematic random sample.

----> Sample Size

The sample size varied in each quarter (it is Q1=19429, Q2=19419, Q3=19119 and Q4=18835) households with a total number of 76802 households annually. These households are distributed on the governorate level (urban/rural).

A more detailed description of the different sampling stages and allocation of sample across governorates is provided in the Methodology document available among external resources in Arabic.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire design follows the latest International Labor Organization (ILO) concepts and definitions of labor force, employment, and unemployment.

The questionnaire comprises 3 tables in addition to the identification and geographic data of household on the cover page.

----> Table 1- Demographic and employment characteristics and basic data for all household individuals

Including: gender, age, educational status, marital status, residence mobility and current work status

----> Table 2- Employment characteristics table

This table is filled by employed individuals at the time of the survey or those who were engaged to work during the reference week, and provided information on: - Relationship to employer: employer, self-employed, waged worker, and unpaid family worker - Economic activity - Sector - Occupation - Effective working hours - Work place - Average monthly wage

----> Table 3- Unemployment characteristics table

This table is filled by all unemployed individuals who satisfied the unemployment criteria, and provided information on: - Type of unemployment (unemployed, unemployed ever worked) - Economic activity and occupation in the last held job before being unemployed - Last unemployment duration in months - Main reason for unemployment

Cleaning operations

----> Raw Data

Office editing is one of the main stages of the survey. It started once the questionnaires were received from the field and accomplished by the selected work groups. It includes: a-Editing of coverage and completeness b-Editing of consistency

----> Harmonized Data

• The STATA is used to clean and SPSS is used harmonize the datasets.
• The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.
• All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.

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 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) carried out four rounds of the Labor Force Survey 2012 (LFS). The survey rounds covered a total sample of about 30,887 households, and the number of completed questionaire is 26,898.

The main objective of collecting data on the labour force and its components, including employment, unemployment and underemployment, is to provide basic information on the size and structure of the Palestinian labour force. Data collected at different points in time provide a basis for monitoring current trends and changes in the labour market and in the employment situation. These data, supported with information on other aspects of the economy, provide a basis for the evaluation and analysis of macro-economic policies.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a representative sample on the region level (West Bank, Gaza Strip), the locality type (urban, rural, camp) and the governorates.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered all Palestinian households who are a usual residence of the Palestinian Territory.

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

The methodology was designed according to the context of the survey, international standards, data processing requirements and comparability of outputs with other related surveys.

---> Target Population: It consists of all individuals aged 10 years and older normally residing in their households in Palestine during 2012.

---> Sampling Frame: The sampling frame consists of the master sample, which was updated in 2011: each enumeration area consists of buildings and housing units with an average of about 124 households. The master sample consists of 596 enumeration areas; we used 498 enumeration areas as a framework for the labor force survey sample in 2012 and these units were used as primary sampling units (PSUs).

---> Sampling Size: The estimated sample size in the first quarter was 7,775 households, in the second quarter it was 7,713 households, in the third quarter it was 7,695 households and in the fourth quarter it was 7,704 households.

---> Sample Design The sample is two stage stratified cluster sample with two stages : First stage: we select a systematic random sample of 498 enumeration areas for the whole round ,and we excluded the enumeration areas which its sizes less than 40 households. Second stage: we select a systematic random sample of 16 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage, se we select a systematic random of 16 households of the enumeration areas which its size is 80 household and over and the enumeration areas which its size is less than 80 households we select systematic random of 8 households.

---> Sample strata: The population was divided by: 1- Governorate (16 governorate) 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps).

---> Sample Rotation: Each round of the Labor Force Survey covers all of the 498 master sample enumeration areas. Basically, the areas remain fixed over time, but households in 50% of the EAs were replaced in each round. The same households remain in the sample for two consecutive rounds, left for the next two rounds, then selected for the sample for another two consecutive rounds before being dropped from the sample. An overlap of 50% is then achieved between both consecutive rounds and between consecutive years (making the sample efficient for monitoring purposes).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The survey questionnaire was designed according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations. The questionnaire includes four main parts:

---> 1. Identification Data: The main objective for this part is to record the necessary information to identify the household, such as, cluster code, sector, type of locality, cell, housing number and the cell code.

---> 2. Quality Control: This part involves groups of controlling standards to monitor the field and office operation, to keep in order the sequence of questionnaire stages (data collection, field and office coding, data entry, editing after entry and store the data.

---> 3. Household Roster: This part involves demographic characteristics about the household, like number of persons in the household, date of birth, sex, educational level…etc.

---> 4. Employment Part: This part involves the major research indicators, where one questionnaire had been answered by every 15 years and over household member, to be able to explore their labour force status and recognize their major characteristics toward employment status, economic activity, occupation, place of work, and other employment indicators.

Cleaning operations

---> Raw Data The data processing stage consisted of the following operations: 1. Editing and coding before data entry: All questionnaires were edited and coded in the office using the same instructions adopted for editing in the field. 2. Data entry: At this stage, data was entered into the computer using a data entry template designed in Access. The data entry program was prepared to satisfy a number of requirements such as: - Duplication of the questionnaires on the computer screen. - Logical and consistency check of data entered. - Possibility for internal editing of question answers. - Maintaining a minimum of digital data entry and fieldwork errors. - User friendly handling. Possibility of transferring data into another format to be used and analyzed using other statistical analytic systems such as SPSS.

---> Harmonized Data - The SPSS package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency. - All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.

Response rate

The survey sample consists of 30,887 households, of which 26,898 households completed the interview: 17,594 households from the West Bank and 9,304 households in Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for the non-response rate. The response rate in the West Bank was 90.2 %, while in the Gaza Strip it was 94.7%.

Sampling error estimates

---> Sampling Errors Data of this survey may be affected by sampling errors due to use of a sample and not a complete enumeration. Therefore, certain differences can be expected in comparison with the real values obtained through censuses. Variances were calculated for the most important indicators: the variance table is attached with the final report. There is no problem in disseminating results at national or governorate level for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

---> Non-Sampling Errors Non-statistical errors are probable in all stages of the project, during data collection or processing. This is referred to as non-response errors, response errors, interviewing errors, and data entry errors. To avoid errors and reduce their effects, great efforts were made to train the fieldworkers intensively. They were trained on how to carry out the interview, what to discuss and what to avoid, carrying out a pilot survey, as well as practical and theoretical training during the training course. Also data entry staff were trained on the data entry program that was examined before starting the data entry process. To stay in contact with progress of fieldwork activities and to limit obstacles, there was continuous contact with the fieldwork team through regular visits to the field and regular meetings with them during the different field visits. Problems faced by fieldworkers were discussed to clarify any issues. Non-sampling errors can occur at the various stages of survey implementation whether in data collection or in data processing. They are generally difficult to be evaluated statistically.

They cover a wide range of errors, including errors resulting from non-response, sampling frame coverage, coding and classification, data processing, and survey response (both respondent and interviewer-related). The use of effective training and supervision and the careful design of questions have direct bearing on limiting the magnitude of non-sampling errors, and hence enhancing the quality of the resulting data. The implementation of the survey encountered non-response where the case ( household was not present at home ) during the fieldwork visit

BackgroundThe need for increased attention to surgical safety in low- and middle-income countries invited organizations worldwide to support improvements in surgical care. However, little is written about issues in instrument sterilization in low- and middle-income countries including Ethiopia.ObjectiveThe study aims to identify the impact of a sterile processing course, with a training-of-trainers component and workplace mentoring on surgical instrument cleaning and sterilization practices at 12 hospitals in Ethiopia.MethodA mixed-methods research design that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative research approaches to address issues in sterile processing was used for this study. The quantitative data (test results) were validated by qualitative data (hospital assessments, including observations and participant feedback). Twelve hospitals were involved in the training, including two university teaching hospitals from two regions of Ethiopia. In each of the two regions 30 sterile processing staff were invited to participate in a three-day course including theory and skills training; 12–15 of these individuals were invited to remain for a two-day training of trainers course. The collected quantitative data were analysed using a paired t-test by SPSS software, whereas comparative analysis was employed for the qualitative data.ResultsProcess, structural, and knowledge changes were identified following program implementation. Knowledge test results indicated an increase of greater than 20% in participant sterile processing knowledge. Changes in process included improved flow of instruments from dirty to clean, greater attention to detail during the cleaning and decontamination steps, more focused inspection of instruments and careful packaging, as well as changes to how instruments were stored. Those trained to be trainers had taught over 250 additional staff.ConclusionsIncreased attention to and knowledge in sterile processing practices and care of instruments with a short, one-week course provides evidence that a small amount of resources applied to a largely under-resourced area of healthcare can result in decreased risks to patients and staff. Providing education in sterile processing and ensuring staff have the ability to disseminate their learnings to other health care providers results in decreasing risks of hospital associated infections in patients.

!!!WARNING~~~This dataset has a large number of flaws and is unable to properly answer many questions that people generally use it to answer, such as whether national hate crimes are changing (or at least they use the data so improperly that they get the wrong answer). A large number of people using this data (academics, advocates, reporting, US Congress) do so inappropriately and get the wrong answer to their questions as a result. Indeed, many published papers using this data should be retracted. Before using this data I highly recommend that you thoroughly read my book on UCR data, particularly the chapter on hate crimes (https://ucrbook.com/hate-crimes.html) as well as the FBI's own manual on this data. The questions you could potentially answer well are relatively narrow and generally exclude any causal relationships. ~~~WARNING!!!For a comprehensive guide to this data and other UCR data, please see my book at ucrbook.comVersion 9 release notes:Adds 2021 data.Version 8 release notes:Adds 2019 and 2020 data. Please note that the FBI has retired UCR data ending in 2020 data so this will be the last UCR hate crime data they release. Changes .rda file to .rds.Version 7 release notes:Changes release notes description, does not change data.Version 6 release notes:Adds 2018 dataVersion 5 release notes:Adds data in the following formats: SPSS, SAS, and Excel.Changes project name to avoid confusing this data for the ones done by NACJD.Adds data for 1991.Fixes bug where bias motivation "anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, mixed group (lgbt)" was labeled "anti-homosexual (gay and lesbian)" prior to 2013 causing there to be two columns and zero values for years with the wrong label.All data is now directly from the FBI, not NACJD. The data initially comes as ASCII+SPSS Setup files and read into R using the package asciiSetupReader. All work to clean the data and save it in various file formats was also done in R. Version 4 release notes: Adds data for 2017.Adds rows that submitted a zero-report (i.e. that agency reported no hate crimes in the year). This is for all years 1992-2017. Made changes to categorical variables (e.g. bias motivation columns) to make categories consistent over time. Different years had slightly different names (e.g. 'anti-am indian' and 'anti-american indian') which I made consistent. Made the 'population' column which is the total population in that agency. Version 3 release notes: Adds data for 2016.Order rows by year (descending) and ORI.Version 2 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. The Hate Crime data is an FBI data set that is part of the annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data. This data contains information about hate crimes reported in the United States. Please note that the files are quite large and may take some time to open.Each row indicates a hate crime incident for an agency in a given year. I have made a unique ID column ("unique_id") by combining the year, agency ORI9 (the 9 character Originating Identifier code), and incident number columns together. Each column is a variable related to that incident or to the reporting agency. Some of the important columns are the incident date, what crime occurred (up to 10 crimes), the number of victims for each of these crimes, the bias motivation for each of these crimes, and the location of each crime. It also includes the total number of victims, total number of offenders, and race of offenders (as a group). Finally, it has a number of columns indicating if the victim for each offense was a certain type of victim or not (e.g. individual victim, business victim religious victim, etc.). The only changes I made to the data are the following. Minor changes to column names to make all column names 32 characters or fewer (so it can be saved in a Stata format), made all character values lower case, reordered columns. I also generated incident month, weekday, and month-day variables from the incident date variable included in the original data.

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 DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS OF THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN

The Department of Statistics (DOS) carried out four rounds of the 2016 Employment and Unemployment Survey (EUS). The survey rounds covered a sample of about fourty nine thousand households Nation-wide. The sampled households were selected using a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling design.

It is worthy to mention that the DOS employed new technology in data collection and data processing. Data was collected using electronic questionnaire instead of a hard copy, namely a hand held device (PDA).

The survey main objectives are: - To identify the demographic, social and economic characteristics of the population and manpower. - To identify the occupational structure and economic activity of the employed persons, as well as their employment status. - To identify the reasons behind the desire of the employed persons to search for a new or additional job. - To measure the economic activity participation rates (the number of economically active population divided by the population of 15+ years old). - To identify the different characteristics of the unemployed persons. - To measure unemployment rates (the number of unemployed persons divided by the number of economically active population of 15+ years old) according to the various characteristics of the unemployed, and the changes that might take place in this regard. - To identify the most important ways and means used by the unemployed persons to get a job, in addition to measuring durations of unemployment for such persons. - To identify the changes overtime that might take place regarding the above-mentioned variables.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a sample representative on the national level (Kingdom), governorates, and the three Regions (Central, North and South).

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing 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 DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS OF THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Cleaning operations

----> Raw Data

A tabulation results plan has been set based on the previous Employment and Unemployment Surveys while the required programs were prepared and tested. When all prior data processing steps were completed, the actual survey results were tabulated using an ORACLE package. The tabulations were then thoroughly checked for consistency of data. The final report was then prepared, containing detailed tabulations as well as the methodology of the survey.

----> Harmonized Data

• The SPSS package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets.
• The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.
• All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.

This study explores the multifaceted meanings of food and how they vary across the United States, China, and India. The research examines self-identity, social, and cultural dimensions of food and measures them using the FOODSCAPE scale. An online survey was used to gather data and MANCOVA analysis found that meanings associated with food vary between countries but many patterns emerged. We have deposited clean data in SPSS format, an Excel table mapping the survey questions to the SPSS variables, and the methodology section of the paper.

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 decrease in the sample size compared to other years is due to the fact that 8268 households could not be reached by the interviewers due to the severe siege imposed on the occupied Palestinian territories since the outbreak of al-Aqsa or for other reasons.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) carried out four rounds of the Labor Force Survey 2002(LFS).

The importance of this survey lies in that it focuses mainly on labour force key indicators, main characteristics of the employed, unemployed, underemployed and persons outside labour force, labour force according to level of education, distribution of the employed population by occupation, economic activity, place of work, employment status, hours and days worked and average daily wage in NIS for the employees.

The survey main objectives are: - To estimate the labor force and its percentage to the population. - To estimate the number of employed individuals. - To analyze labour force according to gender, employment status, educational level , occupation and economic activity. - To provide information about the main changes in the labour market structure and its socio economic characteristics. - To estimate the numbers of unemployed individuals and analyze their general characteristics. - To estimate the rate of working hours and wages for employed individuals in addition to analyze of other characteristics.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a representative sample on the region level (West Bank, Gaza Strip), the locality type (urban, rural, camp) and the governorates.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered all Palestinian households who are a usual residence of the Palestinian Territory.

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. The decrease in the sample size compared to other years is due to the fact that 8268 households could not be reached by the interviewers due to the severe siege imposed on the occupied Palestinian territories since the outbreak of al-Aqsa or for other reasons.

The methodology was designed according to the context of the survey, international standards, data processing requirements and comparability of outputs with other related surveys.

Target Population:

All Palestinians aged 10 years or older living in the Palestinian Territory, excluding those living in institutions such as prisons or shelters.

Sampling Frame:

The sampling frame consisted of a master sample of Enumeration Areas (EAs) selected from the population housing and establishment census 1997. The master sample consists of area units of relatively equal size (number of households), these units have been used as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs).

Sample Design:

The sample is a two-stage stratified cluster random sample.

Stratification: Four levels of stratification were made:

1. Stratification by Governorates.
2. Stratification by type of locality which comprises: (a) Urban, (b) Rural, and (c) Refugee Camps
3. Stratification by classifying localities, excluding governorate centers, into three strata based on the ownership of households of durable goods within these localities.
4. Stratification by size of locality (number of households).

Sample Size:

The sample size in the first quarter consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 20,952 persons aged 15 years and over (including 22,874 aged 15 years and over). In the second round the sample consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 28,922 persons aged 10 years and over (including 22,762 aged 15 years and over), in the third round the sample consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 28,380 persons aged 10 years and over (including 22,495 aged 15 years and over). which amounts to a sample of around 26,974 persons aged 10 years and over (including 21,240 aged 15 years and over). In the fourth round the sample consisted of 7,559 households; which amounts to a sample of around 27,870 persons aged 10 years and over (including 21,868 aged 15 years and over).

The sample size allowed for non-response and related losses. In addition, the average number of households selected in each cell was 16.

It should be noted that 8268 households could not be reached by the interviewers due to the severe siege imposed on the occupied Palestinian territories since the outbreak of al-Aqsa or for other reasons .

Sample Rotation:

Each round of the Labor Force Survey covers all the 481 master sample areas. Basically, the areas remain fixed over time, but households in 50% of the EAs are replaced each round. The same household remains in the sample over 2 consecutive rounds, rests for the next two rounds and represented again in the sample for another and last two consecutive rounds before it is dropped from the sample. A 50 % overlap is then achieved between both consecutive rounds and between consecutive years (making the sample efficient for monitoring purposes). In earlier applications of the LFS (rounds 1 to 11); the rotation pattern used was different; requiring a household to remain in the sample for six consecutive rounds, then dropped. The objective of such a pattern was to increase the overlap between consecutive rounds. The new rotation pattern was introduced to reduce the burden on the households resulting from visiting the same household for six consecutive times.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

One of the main survey tools is the questionnaire, the survey questionnaire was designed according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations. The questionnaire includes four main parts:

1. Identification Data:

The main objective for this part is to record the necessary information to identify the household, such as, cluster code, sector, type of locality, cell, housing number and the cell code.

2. Quality Control:

This part involves groups of controlling standards to monitor the field and office operation, to keep in order the sequence of questionnaire stages (data collection, field and office coding, data entry, editing after entry and store the data.

3. Household Roster:

This part involves demographic characteristics about the household, like number of persons in the household, date of birth, sex, educational level…etc.

4. Employment Part:

This part involves the major research indicators, where one questionnaire had been answered by every 15 years and over household member, to be able to explore their labour force status and recognize their major characteristics toward employment status, economic activity, occupation, place of work, and other employment indicators.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

The data processing stage consisted of the following operations: 1. Editing before data entry All questionnaires were then edited in the main office using the same instructions adopted for editing in the field.

1. Coding At this stage, the Economic Activity variable underwent coding according to West Bank and Gaza Strip Standard commodities Classification, based on the United Nations ISIC-3. The Economic Activity for all employed and ever employed individuals was classified at the fourth-digit-level. The occupations were coded on the basis of the International Standard Occupational Classification of 1988 at the third-digit-level (ISCO-88).

2. Data Entry In this stage data were entered into the computer, using a data entry template BLAISE. The data entry program was prepared in order to satisfy the following requirements:

• Duplication of the questionnaire on the computer screen.
• Logical and consistency checks of data entered.
• Possibility for internal editing of questionnaire answers.
• Maintaining a minimum of errors in digital data entry and fieldwork.
• User-friendly handling

Accordingly, data editing took place at a number of stages through the processing including: 1. office editing and coding 2. during data entry 3. structure checking and completeness 4. structural checking of SPSS data files

Harmonized Data

• The SPSS package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets.
• The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.
• All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be

Abstract

The Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS) is of great importance among other household surveys conducted by statistical agencies in various countries around the world. This survey provides a large amount of data to rely on in measuring the living standards of households and individuals, as well as establishing databases that serve in measuring poverty, designing social assistance programs, and providing necessary weights to compile consumer price indices, considered to be an important indicator to assess inflation. The HIECS 2008/2009 is the tenth Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey that was carried out in 2008/2009, among a long series of similar surveys that started back in 1955.

Survey Objectives: 1- To identify expenditure levels and patterns of population as well as socio- economic and demographic differentials. 2- To estimate the quantities and values of commodities and services consumed by households during the survey period to determine the levels of consumption and estimate the current demand which is an important input for national planning. Current and past demand estimates are utilized to predict future demands 3- To measure mean household and per-capita expenditure for various expenditure items along with socio-economic correlates. 4- To define percentage distribution of expenditure for various items used in compiling consumer price indices which is considered important indicator for measuring inflation 5- To define mean household and per-capita income from different sources. 6- To provide data necessary to measure standard of living for households and individuals. Poverty analysis and setting up a basis for social welfare assistance are highly dependant on the results of this survey. 7- To provide essential data to measure elasticity which reflects the percentage change in expenditure for various commodity and service groups against. the percentage change in total expenditure for the purpose of predicting the levels of expenditure and consumption for different commodity and service items in urban and rural areas. 8- To provide data essential for comparing change in expenditure against change in income to measure income elasticity of expenditure. 9- To study the relationships between demographic, geographical and housing characteristics of households and their income and expenditure for commodities and services. 10- To provide data necessary for national accounts especially in compiling inputs and outputs tables. 11- To identify consumers behavior changes among socio-economic groups in urban and rural areas. 12- To identify per capita food consumption and its main components of calories, proteins and fats according to its sources and the levels of expenditure in both urban and rural areas. 13- To identify the value of expenditure for food according to sources, either from household production or not, in addition to household expenditure for non food commodities and services. 14- To identify distribution of households according to the possession of some appliances and equipments such as (cars, satellites, mobiles …) in urban and rural areas.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

• Househoolds
• Individuals

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing in surveyed households.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sample of HIECS, 2008-2009 is a two-stage stratified cluster sample, approximately self-weighted, of nearly 48000 households. The main elements of the sampling design are described in the following.

Sample Size It has been deemed important to retain the same sample size of the previous two HIECS rounds. Thus, a sample of about 48000 households has been considered. The justification of maintaining the sample size at this level is to have estimates with levels of precision similar to those of the previous two rounds: therefore trend analysis with the previous two surveys will not be distorted by substantial changes in sampling errors from round to another. In addition, this relatively large national sample implies proportional samples of reasonable sizes for smaller governorates. Nonetheless, over-sampling has been introduced to raise the sample size of small governorates to about 1000 households As a result, reasonably precise estimates could be extracted for those governorates. The over-sampling has resulted in a slight increase in the national sample to 48658 households.

Cluster size An important lesson learned from the previous two HIECS rounds is that the cluster size applied in both surveys is found to be too large to yield an accepted design effect estimates. The cluster size was 40 households in the 2004-2005 round, descending from 80 households in the 1999-2000 round. The estimates of the design effect (deft) for most survey measures of the latest round were extraordinary large. As a result, it has been decided to decrease the cluster size to only 19 households (20 households in urban governorates to account for anticipated non-response in those governorates: in view of past experience non-response is almost nil in rural governorates).

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Telephone Interview [cati]

Research instrument

Three different questionnaires have been designed as following: 1- Expenditure and consumption questionnaire. 2- Diary questionnaire for expenditure and consumption. 3- Income questionnaire.

Cleaning operations

Office Editing: It is one of the main stages of the survey. It started as soon as the questionnaires were received from the field and accomplished by selected work groups. It includes: a- Editing of coverage and completeness b- Editing of consistency c- Arithmetic editing of quantities and values.

Data Coding: Specialized staff has coded the data of industry, occupation and geographical identification.

Data Processing and preparing final results It included machine data entry, data validation and tabulation and preparing final survey volumes

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 Office. - 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 run 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

For the total sample, the response rate was 96.3% (93.95% in urban areas and 98.4% in rural areas). Response rates on the governorate level at each sampling stage are presented in the methodology document attached to the external resources in both Arabic and English.

Sampling error estimates

The sampling error of major survey estimates has been derived using the Ultimate Cluster Method as applied in the CENVAR Module of the Integrated Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS) Package. In addition to the estimate of sampling error, the output includes estimates of coefficient of variation, design effect (deff) and 95% confidence intervals.

Data appraisal

Quality Control Procedures:

The precision of survey results depends to a large extent on how the survey has been prepared for. As such, it was deemed crucial to exert much effort and to take necessary actions towards rigorous preparation for the present survey. The preparatory activities, extended over 3 months, included forming Technical Committee. The Committee has set up the general framework of survey implementation such as:

1- Applying the recent international recommendations of different concepts and definitions of income and expenditure considering maintaining the consistency with the previous surveys in order to compare and study the changes in pertinent indicators.

2- Evaluating the quality of data in all different Implementation stages to avoid or minimize errors to the lowest extent possible through: - Implementing field editing after finishing data collection for households in governorates to avoid any errors in suitable time. - Setting up a program for the Survey Technical Committee Members and survey staff for visiting field work in all governorates (each 15 days) to solve any problem in the proper time. - Re-interviewing a sample of households by Quality Control Department and examining the differences with the original responses. - For the purpose of quality assurance, tables were generated for each survey round where internal consistency checks were performed to study the plausibility of mean household expenditure on major expenditure commodity groups and its variability over major geographic regions.

For any questions about this data please email me at jacob@crimedatatool.com. If you use this data, please cite it.Version 5 release notes:Adds data in the following formats: SPSS, SAS, and Excel.Changes project name to avoid confusing this data for the ones done by NACJD.Adds data for 1991.Fixes bug where bias motivation "anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, mixed group (lgbt)" was labeled "anti-homosexual (gay and lesbian)" prior to 2013 causing there to be two columns and zero values for years with the wrong label.All data is now directly from the FBI, not NACJD. The data initially comes as ASCII+SPSS Setup files and read into R using the package asciiSetupReader. All work to clean the data and save it in various file formats was also done in R. For the R code used to clean this data, see here. https://github.com/jacobkap/crime_data. Version 4 release notes: Adds data for 2017.Adds rows that submitted a zero-report (i.e. that agency reported no hate crimes in the year). This is for all years 1992-2017. Made changes to categorical variables (e.g. bias motivation columns) to make categories consistent over time. Different years had slightly different names (e.g. 'anti-am indian' and 'anti-american indian') which I made consistent. Made the 'population' column which is the total population in that agency. Version 3 release notes: Adds data for 2016.Order rows by year (descending) and ORI.Version 2 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. The Hate Crime data is an FBI data set that is part of the annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data. This data contains information about hate crimes reported in the United States. Please note that the files are quite large and may take some time to open.Each row indicates a hate crime incident for an agency in a given year. I have made a unique ID column ("unique_id") by combining the year, agency ORI9 (the 9 character Originating Identifier code), and incident number columns together. Each column is a variable related to that incident or to the reporting agency. Some of the important columns are the incident date, what crime occurred (up to 10 crimes), the number of victims for each of these crimes, the bias motivation for each of these crimes, and the location of each crime. It also includes the total number of victims, total number of offenders, and race of offenders (as a group). Finally, it has a number of columns indicating if the victim for each offense was a certain type of victim or not (e.g. individual victim, business victim religious victim, etc.). The only changes I made to the data are the following. Minor changes to column names to make all column names 32 characters or fewer (so it can be saved in a Stata format), changed the name of some UCR offense codes (e.g. from "agg asslt" to "aggravated assault"), made all character values lower case, reordered columns. I also added state, county, and place FIPS code from the LEAIC (crosswalk) and generated incident month, weekday, and month-day variables from the incident date variable included in the original data.

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 survey data covers urban, rural and camp areas in West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered all the Palestinian households who are a usual residence in the Palestinian Territory.

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:

The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which were enumerated in 2007, each numeration area consists of buildings and housing units with average of about 120 households in it. These enumeration areas are used as primary sampling units PSUs in the first stage of the sampling selection.

Sample Design:

The sample is a stratified cluster systematic random sample with two stages: First stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 191 enumeration areas. Second stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 24 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage.

Note: in Jerusalem Governorate (J1), 13 enumeration areas were selected; then in the second phase, a group of households from each enumeration area were chosen using census-2007 method of delineation and enumeration. This method was adopted to ensure household response is to the maximum to comply with the percentage of non-response as set in the sample design.

Enumeration areas were distributed to twelve months and the sample for each quarter covers sample strata (Governorate, locality type)

Sample strata:

The population was divided by: 1- Governorate 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps)

Sample Size:

The calculated sample size for the Expenditure and Consumption Survey in 2009 is about 3,848 households, 2,654 households in West Bank and 1,194 households in Gaza Strip.

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 house, 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.

Assistance and poverty: includes questions about household conditions and assistances that got through the the past month.

Second section: The second section of the questionnaire includes a list of 55 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 667 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 50-55 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, except the cars group the data of which was collected for three previous years. These data was abotained from the recording book which is covered a period of month for each household.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

Data editing took place through a number of stages, including: 1. Office editing and coding 2. During data entry 3. Structure checking and completeness 4. Structural checking of SPSS data files

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

The survey sample consists of about 4,699 households of which 3,627 households completed the interview; whereas 2,654 households from the West Bank and 973 households in Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for non-response rate. The response rate in the West Bank reached 85.5% while in the Gaza Strip it reached 67%. The response rate in the Palestinian Territory reached 79.57%.

Sampling error estimates

The impact of errors on the data quality was reduced to the minimal due to the high efficiency and outstanding selection, training, and performance of the fieldworkers. Procedures adopted during the fieldwork of the survey were considered a necessity to ensure the collection of accurate data, notably: 1) Develop schedules to conduct field visits to households during survey fieldwork. The objectives of the visits and the data that is collected on each visit were predetermined. 2) Fieldwork editing rules were applied during the data collection to ensure corrections were implemented before the end of fieldwork activities. 3) Fieldworker were instructed to provide details in case of extreme expenditure or consumption of the household. 4) Postpone the questions on income to the last visit at the end of the month . 5) Validation rules were embedded in the data processing systems along with procedures to verify data entry and data editing.

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 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) carried out four rounds of the Labor Force Survey 2011 (LFS). The survey rounds covered a total sample of about 31,190 households, and the number of completed questionaire is 28,083.

The importance of this survey lies in that it focuses mainly on labour force key indicators, main characteristics of the employed, unemployed, underemployed and persons outside labour force, labour force according to level of education, distribution of the employed population by occupation, economic activity, place of work, employment status, hours and days worked and average daily wage in NIS for the employees.

The survey main objectives are: - To estimate the labor force and its percentage to the population. - To estimate the number of employed individuals. - To analyze labour force according to gender, employment status, educational level, occupation and economic activity. - To provide information about the main changes in the labour market structure and its socio economic characteristics. - To estimate the numbers of unemployed individuals and analyze their general characteristics. - To estimate the rate of working hours and wages for employed individuals in addition to analyze of other characteristics.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a representative sample on the region level (West Bank, Gaza Strip), the locality type (urban, rural, camp) and the governorates.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered all Palestinian households who are a usual residence of the Palestinian Territory.

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

The methodology was designed according to the context of the survey, international standards, data processing requirements and comparability of outputs with other related surveys.

---> Target Population: It consists of all Palestinian households who are staying normally in the Palestinian Territory (west bank and gaza strip) during the year of 2011.

---> Sampling Frame: The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which were enumerated in 2007, each numeration area consists of buildings and housing units with average of about 124 households. These enumeration areas are used as primary sampling units (PSUs) in the first stage of the sampling selection.

---> Sampling Size: The sample size was about 7,820 households in the 60th round and 7,802 households in the 61th round, and 7,784 households in the 62th round and 7,784 households in the 63th round, and there is 50% overlapping among households between each two consecutive rounds.

---> Sample Design The sample of the Labor Force Survey (LFS) which implemented periodically every quarter by PCBS since 1995, so this survey implement every quarter in the year 2011(distributed over 13 weeks). The sample is two stage stratified cluster sample with two stages : First stage: we select a systematic random sample of 502 enumeration areas for the whole round, and we excluded the enumeration areas which its sizes less than 40 households. Second stage: we select a systematic random sample of 16 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage, se we select a systematic random of 16 households of the enumeration areas which its size is 80 household and over and the enumeration areas which its size is less than 80 households we select systematic random of 8 households.

---> Sample strata: The population was divided by: 1- Governorate (16 governorate) 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps).

---> Sample Rotation: Each round of the Labor Force Survey covers all of the 502 master sample enumeration areas. Basically, the areas remain fixed over time, but households in 50% of the EAs are replaced each round. The same household remains in the sample for 2 consecutive rounds, left for the next two rounds, then selected for the sample for another two consecutive rounds before it is dropped from the sample. A 50% overlap is then achieved between both consecutive rounds and between consecutive years (making the sample efficient for monitoring purposes).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The survey questionnaire was designed according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations. The questionnaire includes four main parts:

---> 1. Identification Data: The main objective for this part is to record the necessary information to identify the household, such as, cluster code, sector, type of locality, cell, housing number and the cell code.

---> 2. Quality Control: This part involves groups of controlling standards to monitor the field and office operation, to keep in order the sequence of questionnaire stages (data collection, field and office coding, data entry, editing after entry and store the data.

---> 3. Household Roster: This part involves demographic characteristics about the household, like number of persons in the household, date of birth, sex, educational level…etc.

---> 4. Employment Part: This part involves the major research indicators, where one questionnaire had been answered by every 15 years and over household member, to be able to explore their labour force status and recognize their major characteristics toward employment status, economic activity, occupation, place of work, and other employment indicators.

Cleaning operations

---> Raw Data The data processing stage consisted of the following operations: 1. Editing and coding before data entry: All questionnaires were edited and coded in the office using the same instructions adopted for editing in the field. 2. Data entry: At this stage, data was entered into the computer using a data entry template designed in Access. The data entry program was prepared to satisfy a number of requirements such as: - Duplication of the questionnaires on the computer screen. - Logical and consistency check of data entered. - Possibility for internal editing of question answers. - Maintaining a minimum of digital data entry and fieldwork errors. - User friendly handling. Possibility of transferring data into another format to be used and analyzed using other statistical analytic systems such as SPSS.

---> Harmonized Data - The SPSS package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency. - All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.

Response rate

The survey sample consists of about 31,190 households in 2011, which 28,083 households completed the interview; whereas 18,650 households from the West Bank and 9,433 households in Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for non-response rate. The response rate in the West Bank reached 95% while in the Gaza Strip it reached 96%.

Sampling error estimates

---> Sampling Errors Data of this survey affected by sampling errors due to use of the sample and not a complete enumeration. Therefore, certain differences are expected in comparison with the real values obtained through censuses. Variance were calculated for the most important indicators, the variance table is attached with the final report. There is no problem to disseminate results at the national level and government level.

---> Non-Sampling Errors Non-statistical errors are probable in all stages of the project, during data collection or processing. This is referred to as non-response errors, response errors, interviewing errors, and data entry errors. To avoid errors and reduce their effects, great efforts were made to train the fieldworkers intensively. They were trained on how to carry out the interview, what to discuss and what to avoid, carrying out a pilot survey, as well as practical and theoretical training during the training course. Also data entry staff were trained on the data entry program that was examined before starting the data entry process. To stay in contact with progress of fieldwork activities and to limit obstacles, there was continuous contact with the fieldwork team through regular visits to the field and regular meetings with them during the different field visits. Problems faced by fieldworkers were discussed to clarify any issues. Non-sampling errors can occur at the various stages of survey implementation whether in data

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 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) carried out four rounds of the Labor Force Survey 2001 (LFS).

The importance of this survey lies in that it focuses mainly on labour force key indicators, main characteristics of the employed, unemployed, underemployed and persons outside labour force, labour force according to level of education, distribution of the employed population by occupation, economic activity, place of work, employment status, hours and days worked and average daily wage in NIS for the employees.

The survey main objectives are: - To estimate the labor force and its percentage to the population. - To estimate the number of employed individuals. - To analyze labour force according to gender, employment status, educational level , occupation and economic activity. - To provide information about the main changes in the labour market structure and its socio economic characteristics. - To estimate the numbers of unemployed individuals and analyze their general characteristics. - To estimate the rate of working hours and wages for employed individuals in addition to analyze of other characteristics.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

The Data are representative at region level (West Bank, Gaza Strip), locality type (urban, rural, camp) and governorates

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered all Palestinian households who are a usual residence of the Palestinian Territory.

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

The methodology was designed according to the context of the survey, international standards, data processing requirements and comparability of outputs with other related surveys.

Target Population:

All Palestinians aged 10 years or older living in the Palestinian Territory, excluding those living in institutions such as prisons or shelters.

Sampling Frame:

The sampling frame consisted of a master sample of Enumeration Areas (EAs) selected from the population housing and establishment census 1997. The master sample consists of area units of relatively equal size (number of households), these units have been used as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs).

Sample Design:

The sample is a two-stage stratified cluster random sample.

Stratification: Four levels of stratification were made:

1. Stratification by Governorates.
2. Stratification by type of locality which comprises: (a) Urban, (b) Rural, and (c) Refugee Camps
3. Stratification by classifying localities, excluding governorate centers, into three strata based on the ownership of households of durable goods within these localities.
4. Stratification by size of locality (number of households).

Sample Size:

The sample size in the first quarter consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 28,959 persons aged 15 years and over (including 22,874 aged 15 years and over). In the second round the sample consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 28,922 persons aged 10 years and over (including 22,762 aged 15 years and over), in the third round the sample consisted of 7,559 households, which amounts to a sample of around 28,380 persons aged 10 years and over (including 22,495 aged 15 years and over).which amount to a sample of around 26974 persons aged 10 years and over (including 21240 aged 15 years and over). In the fourth round the sample consisted of 7,559 households; which amounts to a sample of around 27,870 persons aged 10 years and over (including 21,868 aged 15 years and over).

The sample size allowed for non-response and related losses. In addition, the average number of households selected in each cell was 16.

Sample Rotation:

Each round of the Labor Force Survey covers all the 481 master sample areas. Basically, the areas remain fixed over time, but households in 50% of the EAs are replaced each round. The same household remains in the sample over 2 consecutive rounds, rests for the next two rounds and represented again in the sample for another and last two consecutive rounds before it is dropped from the sample. A 50 % overlap is then achieved between both consecutive rounds and between consecutive years (making the sample efficient for monitoring purposes). In earlier applications of the LFS (rounds 1 to 11); the rotation pattern used was different; requiring a household to remain in the sample for six consecutive rounds, then dropped. The objective of such a pattern was to increase the overlap between consecutive rounds. The new rotation pattern was introduced to reduce the burden on the households resulting from visiting the same household for six consecutive times.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

One of the main survey tools is the questionnaire, the survey questionnaire was designed according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) recommendations. The questionnaire includes four main parts:

1. Identification Data:

The main objective for this part is to record the necessary information to identify the household, such as, cluster code, sector, type of locality, cell, housing number and the cell code.

2. Quality Control:

This part involves groups of controlling standards to monitor the field and office operation, to keep in order the sequence of questionnaire stages (data collection, field and office coding, data entry, editing after entry and store the data.

3. Household Roster:

This part involves demographic characteristics about the household, like number of persons in the household, date of birth, sex, educational level…etc.

4. Employment Part:

This part involves the major research indicators, where one questionnaire had been answered by every 15 years and over household member, to be able to explore their labour force status and recognize their major characteristics toward employment status, economic activity, occupation, place of work, and other employment indicators.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

The data processing stage consisted of the following operations: 1. Editing before data entry All questionnaires were then edited in the main office using the same instructions adopted for editing in the field.

1. Coding At this stage, the Economic Activity variable underwent coding according to West Bank and Gaza Strip Standard commodities Classification, based on the United Nations ISIC-3. The Economic Activity for all employed and ever employed individuals was classified at the fourth-digit-level. The occupations were coded on the basis of the International Standard Occupational Classification of 1988 at the third-digit-level (ISCO-88).

2. Data Entry In this stage data were entered into the computer, using a data entry template BLAISE. The data entry program was prepared in order to satisfy the following requirements:

• Duplication of the questionnaire on the computer screen.
• Logical and consistency checks of data entered.
• Possibility for internal editing of questionnaire answers.
• Maintaining a minimum of errors in digital data entry and fieldwork.
• User-friendly handling

Accordingly, data editing took place at a number of stages through the processing including: 1. office editing and coding 2. during data entry 3. structure checking and completeness 4. structural checking of SPSS data files

Harmonized Data

• The SPSS package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets.
• The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.
• All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.

Response rate

The overall response rate for the survey was 84.2%

More information on the distribution of response rates by different survey rounds is available in Page 11 of the data user guide provided among the disseminated survey materials under a file named "Palestine 2001- Data User Guide (English).pdf".

Sampling error estimates

Since the data reported here are based on a sample survey and not on a complete enumeration, they are subjected to sampling errors as well as non-sampling errors. Sampling errors are random outcomes of the sample design, and are, therefore, in principle measurable by the statistical concept of standard error.

A description of the

Abstract

The basic goal of this survey is to provide the necessary database for formulating national policies at various levels. It represents the contribution of the household sector to the Gross National Product (GNP). Household Surveys help as well in determining the incidence of poverty, and providing 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. Generally, the Household Expenditure and Consumption 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 Office was cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major research project to develop and expand knowledge on equity and inequality in the Arab region. The main focus of the project is to measure the magnitude and direction of change in inequality and to understand the complex contributing social, political and economic forces influencing its levels. However, the measurement and analysis of the magnitude and direction of change in this inequality cannot be consistently carried out without harmonized and comparable micro-level data on income and expenditures. Therefore, one important component of this research project is securing and harmonizing household surveys from as many countries in the region as possible, adhering to international statistics on household living standards distribution. Once the dataset has been compiled, the Economic Research Forum makes it available, subject to confidentiality agreements, to all researchers and institutions concerned with data collection and issues of inequality. Data is a public good, in the interest of the region, and it is consistent with the Economic Research Forum's mandate to make micro data available, aiding regional research on this important topic.

Geographic coverage

The survey data covers urban, rural and camp areas in West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Analysis unit

1- Household/families. 2- Individuals.

Universe

The survey covered all Palestinian households who are usually resident in the Palestinian Territory during 2010.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample and Frame:

The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which were enumerated in 2007, each numeration area consists of buildings and housing units with average of about 120 households in it. These enumeration areas are used as primary sampling units PSUs in the first stage of the sampling selection.

Sample Design:

The sample is a stratified cluster systematic random sample with two stages: First stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 192 enumeration areas. Second stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 24 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage.

Note: in Jerusalem Governorate (J1), 13 enumeration areas were selected; then in the second phase, a group of households from each enumeration area were chosen using census-2007 method of delineation and enumeration. This method was adopted to ensure household response is to the maximum to comply with the percentage of non-response as set in the sample design.Enumeration areas were distributed to twelve months and the sample for each quarter covers sample strata (Governorate, locality type) Sample strata:

The population was divided by:

1- Governorate 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps)

Sample Size:

The calculated sample size for the Expenditure and Consumption Survey in 2010 is about 3,757 households, 2,574 households in West Bank and 1,183 households in Gaza Strip.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire consists of two main parts:

First: Survey's questionnaire

Part of the questionnaire is to be filled in during the visit at the beginning of the month, while the other part is to be filled in at the end of the month. The questionnaire includes:

Control sheet: Includes household’s identification data, date of visit, data on the fieldwork and data processing team, and summary of household’s members by gender.

Household roster: Includes demographic, social, and economic characteristics of household’s members.

Housing characteristics: Includes data like type of housing unit, number of rooms, value of rent, and connection of housing unit to basic services like water, electricity and sewage. In addition, data in this section includes source of energy used for cooking and heating, distance of housing unit from transportation, education, and health centers, and sources of income generation like ownership of farm land or animals.

Food and Non-Food Items: includes food and non-food items, and household record her expenditure for one month.

Durable Goods Schedule: Includes list of main goods like washing machine, refrigerator,TV.

Assistances and Poverty: Includes data about cash and in kind assistances (assistance value,assistance source), also collecting data about household situation, and the procedures to cover expenses.

Monthly and annual income: Data pertinent to household’s income from different sources is collected at the end of the registration period.

Second: List of goods

The classification of the list of goods is based on the recommendation of the United Nations for the SNA under the name Classification of Personal Consumption by purpose. The list includes 55 groups of expenditure and consumption where each is given a sequence number based on its importance to the household starting with food goods, clothing groups, housing, medical treatment, transportation and communication, and lastly durable goods. Each group consists of important goods. The total number of goods in all groups amounted to 667 items for goods and services. Groups from 1-21 includes goods pertinent to food, drinks and cigarettes. Group 22 includes goods that are home produced and consumed by the household. The groups 23-45 include all items except food, drinks and cigarettes. The groups 50-55 include durable goods. The data is collected based on different reference periods to represent expenditure during the whole year except for cars where data is collected for the last three years.

Registration form

The registration form includes instructions and examples on how to record consumption and expenditure items. The form includes columns: 1.Monetary: If the good is purchased, or in kind: if the item is self produced. 2.Title of the service of the good 3.Unit of measurement (kilogram, liter, number) 4. Quantity 5. Value

The pages of the registration form are colored differently for the weeks of the month. The footer for each page includes remarks that encourage households to participate in the survey. The following are instructions that illustrate the nature of the items that should be recorded: 1. Monetary expenditures during purchases 2. Purchases based on debts 3.Monetary gifts once presented 4. Interest at pay 5. Self produced food and goods once consumed 6. Food and merchandise from commercial project once consumed 7. Merchandises once received as a wage or part of a wage from the employer.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

Data editing took place through a number of stages, including: 1. Office editing and coding 2. Data entry 3. Structure checking and completeness 4. Structural checking of SPSS data files

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 Office.
• 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 run 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

The survey sample consisted of 4,767 households, which includes 4,608 households of the original sample plus 159 households as an additional sample. A total of 3,757 households completed the interview: 2,574 households from the West Bank and 1,183 households in the Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for the non-response rate. The response rate in the Palestinian Territory 28.1% (82.4% in the West Bank was and 81.6% in Gaza Strip).

Sampling error estimates

The impact of errors on data quality was reduced to a minimum due to the high efficiency and outstanding selection, training, and performance of the fieldworkers. Procedures adopted during the fieldwork of the survey were considered a necessity to ensure the collection of accurate data, notably: 1) Develop schedules to conduct field visits to households during survey fieldwork. The objectives of the visits and the data collected on each visit were predetermined. 2) Fieldwork editing rules were applied during the data collection to ensure corrections were implemented before the end of fieldwork activities. 3) Fieldworkers were instructed to provide details in cases of extreme expenditure or consumption by the household. 4) Questions on income were postponed until the final visit at the end of the month. 5) Validation rules were embedded in the data processing systems, along with procedures to verify data entry and data edit.

Abstract

The basic goal of this survey is to provide the necessary database for formulating national policies at various levels. It represents the contribution of the household sector to the Gross National Product (GNP). Household Surveys help as well in determining the incidence of poverty, and providing 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. Generally, the Household Expenditure and Consumption 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 Office was cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major research project to develop and expand knowledge on equity and inequality in the Arab region. The main focus of the project is to measure the magnitude and direction of change in inequality and to understand the complex contributing social, political and economic forces influencing its levels. However, the measurement and analysis of the magnitude and direction of change in this inequality cannot be consistently carried out without harmonized and comparable micro-level data on income and expenditures. Therefore, one important component of this research project is securing and harmonizing household surveys from as many countries in the region as possible, adhering to international statistics on household living standards distribution. Once the dataset has been compiled, the Economic Research Forum makes it available, subject to confidentiality agreements, to all researchers and institutions concerned with data collection and issues of inequality. Data is a public good, in the interest of the region, and it is consistent with the Economic Research Forum's mandate to make micro data available, aiding regional research on this important topic.

Geographic coverage

The survey data covers urban, rural and camp areas in West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Analysis unit

1- Household/families. 2- Individuals.

Universe

The survey covered all the Palestinian households who are a usual residence in the Palestinian Territory.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample and Frame:

The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which enumerated in 1997 and the numeration area consists of buildings and housing units and has in average about 150 households in it. We use the enumeration areas as primary sampling units PSUs in the first stage of the sampling selection. The enumeration areas of the master sample were updated in 2003.

Sample Design:

The sample is stratified cluster systematic random sample with two stages: First stage: selection a systematic random sample of 120 enumeration areas. Second stage: selection a systematic random sample of 12-18 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage.

Sample strata:

The population is divided by: 1-Region (North West Bank, Middle West Bank, South West Bank, Gaza Strip) 2-Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps)

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 12 households.

Sample Size:

The calculated sample size is 1,714 households, the completed households were 1,231 (812 in the west bank and 419 in the Gaza strip).

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.

Assistance and poverty: includes questions about household conditions and assistances that got through the the past month.

Second section: The second section of the questionnaire includes a list of 55 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 667 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 50-55 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, except the cars group the data of which was collected for three previous years. These data was abotained from the recording book which is covered a period of month for each household.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

Data editing took place through a number of stages, including: 1. Office editing and coding 2. Data entry 3. Structure checking and completeness 4. Structural checking of SPSS data files

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 Office.
• 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 run 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

The survey sample consists of about 1,714 households interviewed over a twelve months period between (January 2007-January 2008).1,231 households completed the interview, of which 812 were from the West Bank and 419 households in Gaza Strip; the response rate was 71.8% in the Palestinian Territory.

Sampling error estimates

The calculations of standard errors for the main survey estimates enable the user to identify the accuracy of estimates and the survey reliability. Total errors of the survey can be divided into two kinds: statistical errors, and non-statistical errors. Non-statistical errors are related to the procedures of statistical work at different stages, such as the failure to explain questions in the questionnaire, unwillingness or inability to provide correct responses, bad statistical coverage, etc. These errors depend on the nature of the work, training, supervision, and conducting of all the various related activities. The work team spared no effort at the different stages to minimize non-statistical errors; however, it is difficult to estimate numerically such errors due to absence of technical computation methods based on theoretical principles to tackle them. On the other hand, statistical errors can be measured. Frequently they are measured by the standard error, which is the positive square root of the variance. The variance of this survey has been computed by using the "programming package" CENVAR

Data appraisal

The impact of errors on the data quality was reduced to the minimal due to the high efficiency and outstanding selection, training, and performance of the fieldworkers. Procedures adopted during the fieldwork of the survey were considered a necessity to ensure the collection of accurate data, notably: 1) Develop schedules to conduct field visits to households during survey fieldwork. The objectives of the visits and the data that is collected on each visit were predetermined. 2) Fieldwork editing rules were applied during the data collection to ensure corrections were implemented before the end of fieldwork activities 3) Fieldworker were instructed to provide details in case of extreme expenditure or consumption of the household. 4) Postpone the questions on income to the last visit at the end of the month 5) Validation rules were embedded in the data processing systems along with procedures to verify data entry and data editing.

Abstract

The basic goal of this survey is to provide the necessary database for formulating national policies at various levels. It represents the contribution of the household sector to the Gross National Product (GNP). Household Surveys help as well in determining the incidence of poverty, and providing 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. Generally, the Household Expenditure and Consumption 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 Office was cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major research project to develop and expand knowledge on equity and inequality in the Arab region. The main focus of the project is to measure the magnitude and direction of change in inequality and to understand the complex contributing social, political and economic forces influencing its levels. However, the measurement and analysis of the magnitude and direction of change in this inequality cannot be consistently carried out without harmonized and comparable micro-level data on income and expenditures. Therefore, one important component of this research project is securing and harmonizing household surveys from as many countries in the region as possible, adhering to international statistics on household living standards distribution. Once the dataset has been compiled, the Economic Research Forum makes it available, subject to confidentiality agreements, to all researchers and institutions concerned with data collection and issues of inequality. Data is a public good, in the interest of the region, and it is consistent with the Economic Research Forum's mandate to make micro data available, aiding regional research on this important topic.

Geographic coverage

The survey data covers urban, rural and camp areas in West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Analysis unit

1- Household/families. 2- Individuals.

Universe

The survey covered all the Palestinian households who are a usual residence in the Palestinian Territory.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample and Frame:

The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which enumerated in 1997 and the numeration area consists of buildings and housing units and has in average about 150 households in it. We use the enumeration areas as primary sampling units PSUs in the first stage of the sampling selection. The enumeration areas of the master sample were updated in 2003.

Sample Design:

The sample is stratified cluster systematic random sample with two stages: The calculated sample size is 1,616 households, the completed households were 1,281 (847 in the west bank and 434 in the Gaza strip). First stage: selection a systematic random sample of 120 enumeration areas. Second stage: selection a systematic random sample of 12-18 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage.

Sample strata:

We divided the population by: 1- Region (North West Bank, Middle West Bank, South West Bank, Gaza Strip) 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps)

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 12 households.

Sample Size:

The calculated sample size is 1,616 households, the completed households were 1,281 (847 in the west bank and 434 in the Gaza strip).

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 house, 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.

Assistance and poverty: includes questions about household conditions and assistances that got through the the past month.

Second section: The second section of the questionnaire includes a list of 55 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 667 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 50-55 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, except the cars group the data of which was collected for three previous years. These data was abotained from the recording book which is covered a period of month for each household.

Cleaning operations

Raw Data

Data editing took place though a number of stages, including: 1. Office editing and coding 2. Data entry 3. Structure checking and completeness 4. Structural checking of SPSS data files

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 Office.
• 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 run 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

The survey sample consists of about 1,616 households interviewed over a twelve months period between (January 2006-January 2007), 1,281 households completed interview, of which 847 in the West Bank and 434 household in Gaza Strip, the response rate was 79.3% in 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 9.6%).

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 Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)

In any society, the human element represents the basis of the work force which exercises all the service and production activities. Therefore, it is a mandate to produce labor force statistics and studies, that is related to the growth and distribution of manpower and labor force distribution by different types and characteristics.

In this context, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics conducts "Quarterly Labor Force Survey" which includes data on the size of manpower and labor force (employed and unemployed) and their geographical distribution by their characteristics.

By the end of each year, CAPMAS issues the annual aggregated labor force bulletin publication that includes the results of the quarterly survey rounds that represent the manpower and labor force characteristics during the year.

----> Historical Review of the Labor Force Survey:

1- The First Labor Force survey was undertaken in 1957. The first round was conducted in November of that year, the survey continued to be conducted in successive rounds (quarterly, bi-annually, or annually) till now.

2- Starting the October 2006 round, the fieldwork of the labor force survey was developed to focus on the following two points: a. The importance of using the panel sample that is part of the survey sample, to monitor the dynamic changes of the labor market. b. Improving the used questionnaire to include more questions, that help in better defining of relationship to labor force of each household member (employed, unemployed, out of labor force ...etc.). In addition to re-order of some of the already existing questions in much logical way.

3- Starting the January 2008 round, the used methodology was developed to collect more representative sample during the survey year. this is done through distributing the sample of each governorate into five groups, the questionnaires are collected from each of them separately every 15 days for 3 months (in the middle and the end of the month)

----> The survey aims at covering the following topics:

1- Measuring the size of the Egyptian labor force among civilians (for all governorates of the republic) by their different characteristics. 2- Measuring the employment rate at national level and different geographical areas. 3- Measuring the distribution of employed people by the following characteristics: gender, age, educational status, occupation, economic activity, and sector. 4- Measuring unemployment rate at different geographic areas. 5- Measuring the distribution of unemployed people by the following characteristics: gender, age, educational status, unemployment type "ever employed/never employed", occupation, economic activity, and sector for people who have ever worked.

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 labor force surveys in several Arab countries.

Geographic coverage

Covering a sample of urban and rural areas in all the governorates.

Analysis unit

1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person.

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing 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 Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)

Sample Design and Selection

The sample of the LFS 2006 survey is a simple systematic random sample.

Sample Size

The sample size varied in each quarter (it is Q1=19429, Q2=19419, Q3=19119 and Q4=18835) households with a total number of 76802 households annually. These households are distributed on the governorate level (urban/rural).

A more detailed description of the different sampling stages and allocation of sample across governorates is provided in the Methodology document available among external resources in Arabic.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire design follows the latest International Labor Organization (ILO) concepts and definitions of labor force, employment, and unemployment.

The questionnaire comprises 3 tables in addition to the identification and geographic data of household on the cover page.

----> Table 1- Demographic and employment characteristics and basic data for all household individuals

Including: gender, age, educational status, marital status, residence mobility and current work status

----> Table 2- Employment characteristics table

This table is filled by employed individuals at the time of the survey or those who were engaged to work during the reference week, and provided information on: - Relationship to employer: employer, self-employed, waged worker, and unpaid family worker - Economic activity - Sector - Occupation - Effective working hours - Work place - Average monthly wage

----> Table 3- Unemployment characteristics table

This table is filled by all unemployed individuals who satisfied the unemployment criteria, and provided information on: - Type of unemployment (unemployed, unemployed ever worked) - Economic activity and occupation in the last held job before being unemployed - Last unemployment duration in months - Main reason for unemployment

Cleaning operations

----> Raw Data

Office editing is one of the main stages of the survey. It started once the questionnaires were received from the field and accomplished by the selected work groups. It includes: a-Editing of coverage and completeness b-Editing of consistency

----> Harmonized Data

• STATA is used to clean and SPSS is used harmonize the datasets.
• The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.
• All cleaned data files are then 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 then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.