In 2008, Sistemas Integrales was asked by AusAid and the World Bank to help the National Statistical Office of Papua New Guinea to develop more effective working methods for their Household Income and Expenditure Survey. Papua New Guinea is an exceptionally difficult country in which to manage complex surveys - it is a huge archipelago, parts of it still unexplored, with many different ethnic groups and languages - and the National Statistical Office had not conducted a satisfactory Income and Expenditure Survey since the 1970s.

As well as designing and selecting the sample and assisting with training field-staff, Sistemas Integrales' experts suggested techniques which were quite new to Papua New Guinea but which have been used successfully in dozens of similar surveys elsewhere. For example, field-teams were provided with computers and trained to enter data as they were collected, using a specially written data-entry program which was easy to use and to supervise. The questionnaires were prepared meticulously, using code-lists which were internationally compatible, and piloted with enough time before the survey went into the field. These and other innovations mean that Papua New Guinea now has useful data on which the National Statistical Office can build. One of the first applications of the survey will be updating the composition of the basket of goods used to set the Consumer Price Index, which is sure to have changed substantially in the last thirty-odd years.

• < Prev
• Next >