Living Standards Survey, Wave 3 (extension), 2007-2008

Potential Data Quality Issues in 2008 Extension survey

Agriculture:
Similarly, to the individual roster of the previous section, the plots listed in the previous survey are listed on the pre-printed cover page and all changes noted. The agricultural section, similarly, to the other sections, suffers from problems with open-ended questions. This is particularly the case for the question asking what community restrictions are placed on the clearing of forest land (section 2d). The translation from the original question was vague (using the Tetun word for "boundary" for "restriction,") and therefore many of the responses relate to physical boundaries on the land, such as stone walls and tree lines. Additionally, the translation of all answers from Tetun into English is imperfect, and those wishing to use this information for analytical purposes are advised to also refer to the original Tetun. Analysts should be careful in using the data from the open ended questions because of translation problems. Also, it was noted during the training and field work that many interviewers had significant difficulties understanding definitions with some of the land management and investment questions. In general, however, all agricultural data may be used for analysis, sampling weights w3.

Finance:
It should be noted that the quality of the data for the finance experiment (comparing the knowledge of the household head to that of other household members) was not sufficient for the experiment to be deemed a success. Subsequent spot-checking revealed that in many cases, interviewers asked the household head about the financial activities of various household members instead of asking them directly. Therefore, this data should only be used to measure the access to finance at the household level. The finance sections were not repeated during the additional interviews in the replacement PSUs. Sampling weights w1 should be used when doing any analysis with this data.

Shocks and Vulnerability:
It was determined following the initial round of data collection that the shocks and vulnerability module had some issues with uneven interview quality. Two reasons were listed as potential causes of the data quality issues: (1) fundamental inability to adequately translate both the word and concept of a "shock" into the Timorese context, and (2) incomplete / questionable responses to the health shock questions in particular. Analysis for health shocks should drop the "questionable" households and use the "re-interview" households, sampling weights w2.

Justice for the Poor:
Similar to the shocks and vulnerability module, the justice module included a long series of follow up questions if the household indicated having experienced a dispute during the recall period. Again, the number of disputes experienced by the household seemed extremely low compared to expectations. This was particularly a problem with the Manatuto district in which no disputes were recorded during the first set of TLSLS2-X interviews. Analysis for the disputes section of the justice module should drop the "questionable" households and use the "re-interview" households, sampling weights w2. The justice model also has a number of instances in which the specifications for "other" were not recorded. Every effort was made to ensure this data was as complete as possible, but gaps do remain. Also, data users should use caution when using the imputed rank variable in section 5D. The rank in terms of importance was not explicitly captured in the data entry software, and the rankings therefore had to be imputed from the order they were listed in the original data entry. Inconsistencies may exist in this variable.