India - Debt and Investment, NSS 59th Round, Schedule 18.2, January - December 2003

Sample Design

Broad design: A stratified multi-stage design has been adopted for the 59th round survey. The first stage unit (FSU) is the census village in the rural sector and UFS block in the urban sector. The ultimate stage units (USUs) are households in both the sectors. Hamlet-groups / sub-blocks constitute the intermediate stage whenever these are formed in the selected FSU.

Sampling Frame for First Stage Units: For rural areas, the list of villages (panchayat wards for Kerala) as per Population Census 1991 and for urban areas the latest UFS frame have been used as sampling frame. For stratification of towns by size class, provisional population of towns as per Census 2001 have been used.

Stratification

Rural Sector: Two special strata have been 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 whenever at least 50 such FSUs were found in a State/UT. Similarly, special stratum 2 was formed if at least 4 such FSUs were found in a State/UT. Otherwise, such FSUs were merged with the general strata.

Urban Sector: In the urban sector, strata have been 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 city with population 10 lakhs or more

Total Sample Size (FSUs): 10608 FSUs have been allocated at all-India level on the basis of investigator strength in different States/UTs for central sample and 11496 for state sample.

There was no deviation from the original sampling design.