New Zealand Sample Design

Sampling Plan and Timetable

Face-to face Survey

This will involve a face-to face survey based on a stratified sample of the New Zealand adult population 18 years and over in private dwellings of 2,500 or more.  The country will be divided into three regions, North North Island, South North Island and South Island, and within these regions into four urban types, Metropolitan (500,00+), large cities (200,000 - 499,999), small cities (20,000 – 199,999) and towns (2,500 – 19,999).  Within each sub-region, sample quotas proportional to the population in each region will be calculated.

Each sampling sub-region is divided into a number of ‘mesh blocks’, or sampling areas, each containing approximately fifty households.  Within each mesh block a clustered sample of five households will be selected.  The appropriate number of mesh blocks in each sub-region will be randomly selected from the total number of mesh blocks in the region.  If the selected mesh blocks do not produce enough respondents, interviewing will be conducted in adjacent mesh blocks until the required sub-sample size is reached.

Within each household, one person will be interviewed, identified by the ‘next birthday’ method.  Up to three attempts will be made to interview the selected respondent.  ‘Male only’ and ‘under 55 years’ quotas will also be imposed to reduce the possibility of males being underrepresented in the sample and older people being over represented.  (‘Male only’ quota is achieved by having one out of every seven interviewers/interviewer days contact male respondents only.  An ‘under 55 years’ quota is achieved in a similar way.)

Reid Research Services, an independent field company, established in 1996, would conduct the survey fieldwork.

Timetable

We would need to give the fieldwork company approximately two months notice; the fieldwork would take about a month and we would provide a clean data set two months after that.  The exact timetable would depend on when the final version of the questionnaire is available.

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Last updated: 6 September 2005
Comments: sgcmhs@indiana.edu
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