India - Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - June 2004, NSS 60th Round

Outline of sample design: A stratified multi-stage design has been adopted for the 60th round survey. The first stage units (FSU) are the 1991 census villages in the rural sector and Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks in the urban sector. The ultimate stage units (USU) are households in both the sectors. In case of large villages/blocks requiring hamlet-group (hg)/sub-block (sb) formation, one intermediate stage has been the selection of two hgs/sbs from each FSU.

Sampling Frame for First Stage Units: For the rural sector, the list of Census 1991 villages (panchayat wards for Kerala) and Census 1981 villages for J & K constituted the sampling frame. For the urban sector, the list of latest available Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks was considered as the sampling frame.

Stratification
Rural sector: Two special strata will be formed at the State/ UT level, viz.

Stratum 1: all FSUs with population between 0 to 50 and
Stratum 2: FSUs with population more than 15,000.

Special stratum 1 was formed if at least 50 such FSUs are found in a State/UT. Similarly, special stratum 2 was formed if at least 4 such FSUs are found in a State/UT. Otherwise, such FSUs were merged with the general strata.

Urban sector: In the urban sector, strata was formed within each NSS region on the basis of size class of towns as per Population Census 2001. The stratum numbers and their composition (within each region) are given below.

stratum 1 : all towns with population less than 50,000
stratum 2 : all towns with population 50,000 or more but less than 2 lakhs
stratum 3 : all towns with population 2 lakhs or more but less than 10 lakhs
stratum 4, 5, 6,...: each town with population 10 lakhs or more


Total sample size (FSUs): 7612 FSUs were allocated at all-India level on the basis of investigator strength in different States/UTs for central sample and 8260 for state sample.

Allocation of total sample to States and UTs: The total number of sample FSUs is allocated to the States and UTs in proportion to provisional population as per Census 2001 subject to the availability of investigators ensuring more or less uniform work-load.

Selection of FSUs: FSUs were selected with Probability Proportional to Size With Replacement (PPSWR), size being the population as per Population Census 1991 in all the strata for rural sector except for stratum 1. In stratum 1 of rural sector and in all the strata of urban sector, selection was done using Simple Random Sampling Without Replacement (SRSWOR). Within each stratum, samples were drawn in the form of two independent sub-samples in both the rural and urban sectors.


There was no deviation from the original sampling design.