India - Employment and Unemployment Survey, January 2004 - June 2004, NSS 60th Round

An outline of the sampling design: The sampling design adopted for the survey was essentially a stratified multi-stage one for both rural and urban areas. The first stage units (FSUs) were villages (panchayat wards for Kerala) for rural areas and NSS Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks for urban areas. The ultimate stage units (USUs) were households. Large FSUs were subdivided into hamlet–groups (rural)/sub-blocks (urban). Details of the formation of hamlet–groups/sub-blocks and procedure of selection of hamlet–groups/sub-blocks and then of households are also given in Appendix B.

Sampling Frame for FSUs: The list of villages (panchayat wards for Kerala) as per 1991 Census and latest lists of UFS blocks of NSSO were respectively used for selection of rural and urban sample FSUs. For selection of sample villages from the State of Jammu & Kashmir, the list of villages as per 1981 Census was used as the sampling frame. However, interior villages of Nagaland situated beyond 5 kms. of the bus route and inaccessible villages of Andaman & Nicobar Islands were left out of the survey coverage of NSS 60th round.

The procedure for selection of fsus/usus is given in detail in Appendix B of the report no.506 attached as external resources.


There was no deviation from the original sample deviation.


A total number of 7,612 FSUs (4,908 villages and 2,704 urban blocks) was selected for survey in the Central sample at the all-India level in the 60th round for canvassing Schedule 10. Out of these 7612 FSUs allotted for survey, 7424 FSUs could be surveyed - 4755 in rural and 2669 in urban.

second stage units: For Schedule 10, a sample of 8 households was selected and surveyed from each selected village and urban block. In the Central sample, 59159 households were actually surveyed – 37883 in rural areas and 21276 in urban areas. As regards the actual number of persons surveyed, it was 204403 in the rural sector and 99425 in the urban sector.


For generating any estimate, one has to extract relevant portion of the data, and aggregate after applying the weights.

Weights (or multipliers) VARIABLES are given at the end of record of each dataset. The weights (multipliers) are
WGT_SS for Sub-sample-wise estimation and WGT_Combined for combined subsample estimates.

All records of a household will have same weight figure. In case of those Blocks/Levels, where Item/Person Sl.No. is not applicable the field is filled up with 00000.

Use of subsample-wise weights (multipliers)

For generating subsample-wise estimates based on data of all subrounds taken together, either Subsample-1 households or Subsample-2 households are to be considered at one time. Subsample code is available in the dataset For generating subsample-combined estimates based on data of all subrounds taken together all households are to be considered.