India - Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - June 1998, NSS 54th Round

There are two schedule types, one with a fixed reference period of 'last 30 days' and the other (schedule type 2) with different reference periods for different groups of consumption items as follows:

Item Reference period
food items, pan, tobacco and
intoxicants last 7 days
fuel and light, miscellaneous goods
and services and medical (non-institutional) last 30 days
educational, medical (institutional),
clothing, footwear and durable goods last 365 days

This approach adopted for schedule type 2 has been devised to take into account the variation in the periodicity with which different items of consumption are purchased by individual households, in a better way. It was ensured, by suitably setting survey dates for sample FSU's, that equal numbers of schedule type 2 households were surveyed in different weeks of each month.

Schedule type 1 was canvassed in fsu's with odd sample village/block number (item 13 of block 1) and Schedule type 2 was canvassed in fsu's with even sample village/block number.