The survey was conducted during December 2006, following an initial mini census listing exercise which was conducted about two months earlier in late September 2006. The objectives of the HIES were as follows: a) Provide information on income and expenditure distribution within the population; b) Provide income estimates of the household sector for the national accounts; c) Provide data for the re-base on the consumer price index; d) Provide data for the analysis of poverty and hardship.

Version 01: Cleaned, labelled and anonymized version of the Master file.

-HOUSEHOLD: Dwellin characteristics, Lighting, Water access, Sanitation, Dwelling tenure, Agricutlural assets, Expenditure, Income.
-INDIVIDUAL: Individual characteristics, Health, Education, Labour force, Income, Allowances.

• Collection start: 2006
• Collection end: 2006

Abstract

The survey was conducted during December 2006, following an initial mini census listing exercise which was conducted about two months earlier in late September 2006. The objectives of the HIES were as follows: a) Provide information on income and expenditure distribution within the population; b) Provide income estimates of the household sector for the national accounts; c) Provide data for the re-base on the consumer price index; d) Provide data for the analysis of poverty and hardship.

Geographic coverage

National coverage: whole island was covered for the survey.

Analysis unit

• Household;
• Individual.

Universe

The survey covered all private households on the island of Nauru. When the survey was in the field, interviewers were further required to reduce the scope by removing those households which had not been residing in Nauru for the last 12 months and did not intend to stay in Nauru for the next 12 months. Persons living in special dwellings (Hospital, Prison, etc) were not included in the survey.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sample size adopted for the survey was 500 households which allowed for expected sample loss, whilst still maintaining a suitable responding sample for the analysis.

Before the sample was selected, the population was stratified by constituency in order to assist with the logistical issues associated with the fieldwork. There were eight constituencies in total, along with "Location" which stretches across the districts of Denigamodu and Aiwo, forming nine strata in total. Although constituency level analysis was not a priority for the survey, sample sizes within each stratum were kept to a minimum of 40 households, to enable some basic forms of analysis at this level if required.

The sample selection procedure within each stratum was then to sort each household on the frame by household size (number of people), and then run a systematic skip through the list in order to achieve the desirable sample size.

Sampling deviation

No deviations from the sample design took place.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The survey schedules adopted for the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) included the following: · Expenditure questionnaire; · Income questionnaire; · Miscellaneous questionnaire; · Diary (x2).

Whilst a Household Control Form collecting basic demographics is also normally included with the survey, this wasn't required for this HIES as this activity took place for all households in the mini census.

Information collected in the four schedules covered the following: -Expenditure questionnaire: Covers basic details about the dwelling structure and its access to things like water and sanitation. It was also used as the vehicle to collect expenditure on major and infrequent expenditures incurred by the household. -Income questionnaire: Covers each of the main types of household income generated by the household such as wages and salaries, business income and income from subsistence activities. -Miscellaneous questionnaire: Covers topics relating to health access, labour force status and education. -Diary: Covers all day to day expenditures incurred by the household, consumption of items produced by the household such as fish and crops, and gifts both received and given by the household.

All questionnaires are provided as External Resources.

Cleaning operations

There were 3 phases to the editing process for the 2006 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) of Nauru which included: 1. Data Verification operations; 2. Data Editing operations; 3. Data Auditing operations.

The software used for data editting is CSPro 3.0. After each batch is completed the supervisor should check that all person details have been entered from the household listing form (HCF) and should review the income and expenditure questionnaires for each batch ensuring that all items have been entered correctly. Any omitted or incorrect items should be entered into the system. The supervisor is required to perform outlier checks (large or small values) on the batched diary data by calculating unit price (amount/quantity) and comparing prices for each item. This is to be conducted by loading the data into Excel files and sorting data by unit price for each item. Any changes to prices or quantities will be made on the batch file.

For more information on what each phase entailed go the document HIES Processing Instructions attached to this documentation.

Response rate

The survey response rates were a lot lower than expected, especially in some districts. The district of Aiwo, Uaboe and Denigomodu had the lowest response rates with 16.7%, 20.0% and 34.8% respectively. The area of Location was also extremely low with a responses rate of 32.2%. On a more positive note, the districts of Yaren, Ewa, Anabar, Ijuw and Anibare all had response rates at 80.0% or better.

The major contributing factor to the low response rates were households refusing to take part in the survey. The figures for responding above only include fully responding households, and given there were many partial responses, this also brought the values down. The other significant contributing factor to the low response rates was the interviewers not being able to make contact with the household during the survey period.

Unfortunately, not only do low response rates often increase the sampling error of the survey estimates, because the final sample is smaller, it will also introduce response bias into the final estimates. Response bias takes place when the households responding to the survey possess different characteristics to the households not responding, thus generating different results to what would have been achieved if all selected households responded. It is extremely difficult to measure the impact of the non-response bias, as little information is generally known about the non-responding households in the survey. For the Nauru 2006 HIES however, it was noted during the fieldwork that a higher proportion of the Chinese population residing in Nauru were more likely to not respond. Given it is expected their income and expenditure patterns would differ from the rest of the population, this would contribute to the magnitude of the bias.

Below is the list of all response rates by district: -Yaren: 80.5% -Boe: 70% -Aiwo: 16.7% -Buada: 62.5% -Denigomodu: 34.8% -Nibok: 68.4% -Uaboe: 20% -Baitsi: 47.8% -Ewa: 80% -Anetan: 76.5% -Anabar: 81.8% -Ijuw: 85.7% -Anibare: 80% -Meneng: 64.3% -Location: 32.2% -TOTAL: 54.4%

Sampling error estimates

To determine the impact of sampling error on the survey results, relative standard errors (RSEs) for key estimates were produced. When interpreting these results, one must remember that these figures don't include any of the non-sampling errors discussed in other sections of this documentation

To also provide a rough guide on how to interpret the RSEs provided in the main report, the following information can be used:

Category  Description
RSE < 5%  Estimate can be regarded as very reliable
5% < RSE < 10% Estimate can be regarded as good and usable
10% < RSE < 25% Estimate can be considered usable, with caution
RSE > 25%  Estimate should only be used with extreme caution

The actual RSEs for the key estimates can be found in Section 4.1 of the main report

As can be seen from these tables, the estimates for Total Income and Total Expenditure from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) can be considered to be very good, from a sampling error perspective. The same can also be said for the Wage and Salary estimate in income and the Food estimate in expenditure, which make up a high proportion of each respective group.

Many of the other estimates should be used with caution, depending on the magnitude of their RSE. Some of these high RSEs are to be expected, due to the expected degree of variability for how households would report for these items. For example, with Business Income (RSE 56.8%), most households would report no business income as no household members undertook this activity, whereas other households would report large business incomes as it's their main source of income.

Data appraisal

Other than the non-response issues discussed in this documentation, other quality issues were identified which included: 1) Reporting errors Some of the different aspects contributing to the reporting errors generated from the survey, with some examples/explanations for each, include the following:

a) Misinterpretation of survey questions: A common mistake which takes place when conducting a survey is that the person responding to the questionnaire may interpret a question differently to the interviewer, who in turn may have interpreted the question differently to the people who designed the questionnaire. Some examples of this for a Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) can include people providing answers in dollars and cents, instead of just dollars, or the reference/recall period for an “income” or “expenditure” is misunderstood. These errors can often see reported amounts out by a factor of 10 or even 100, which can have major impacts on final results.

b) Recall problems for the questionnaire information: The majority of questions in both of the income and expenditure questionnaires require the respondent to recall what took place over a 12 month period. As would be expected, people will often forget what took place up to 12 months ago so some