India - Household Consumer Expenditure, NSS 53th Round, Schedule 1, January - December 1997

As usual, a stratified two-stage design is adopted for the current round. The first-stage units are census villages in the rural sector (panchayat wards in case of Kerala) and the NSSO urban frame survey (UFS) blocks in the urban sector. The second-stage units are households in both the sectors.

SAMPLING FRAME FOR FIRST STAGE UNITS : The lists of census villages of 1991 census (1981 census list for J & K ) constitute the sampling frame for the rural sector. For Kerala, however, the list of panchayat wards has been used as the sampling frame for selection of panchayat wards in the rural sector. For Nagaland, the villages located within 5 kms. of a bus route constitute the sampling frame whereas, for Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the list of 'accessible' villages constitutes the sampling frame. For the urban sector, the lists of NSSO Urban Frame Survey (UFS) blocks have been considered as the sampling frame.

STRATIFICATION
RURAL : In the rural sector, each district is treated as a separate stratum. However, if the 1991 census population of the district is greater than or equal to 2 million (1.8 million population as per 1981 census for J & K) , the districts is split into two or more strata, by grouping contiguous thesis to form strata. In Gujarat, in the case of districts extending over more than one NSS region, the part of a district falling within each NSS region forms a separate stratum.

URBAN : In the urban sector, strata are formed, within each NSS region, by grouping towns on the basis of the population size class of towns.

The total number of sampling units (i.e. villages and blocks) to be surveyed in the present round was fixed at 13,224 for the Central sample and 14,876 for the State sample.
Two different weights have been provided in each file in the data set. Details are as follows:-

1. Weight for each sub sample is stored in the variable name : Wgt_SubSample
2. Combined subsample weight is stored in the variable name : Wgt_Combined