Review of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) Questionnaire
Author:
Abstract:
The FIES is a nationwide survey regularly conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that provides information on the complete range of households’ income and expenditures, and other household characteristics. It is deemed vital for policy analysis and decision making as it is used in calculating the poverty incidence and basket of goods for the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It also contributes to the estimation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and used in wide variety of academic researches. However, several surveys of the Philippine household population are experiencing response errors and memory bias. Particularly for FIES, the wide scope of the instrument entails long interview time which results to respondents’ fatigue, and therefore reduces the quality of data being gathered. In this regard, this research will review the FIES questionnaire by mapping the questions to their corresponding use and determine if each question should be retained or dropped as its information may not be necessary or may be obtained from other sources. This study will be able to supplement recommendations concerning the length of the FIES questionnaire to promote development in the quality of data collected in the household survey.
Keywords: