The survey covers the whole country of Georgia (excluding territories outside the Georgian Government‟s control) and is designed as a panel survey staged to run in two consecutive years. At each stage, two types of survey tools, were used: a) a structured questionnaire for a face-to-face interview and b) a diary questionnaire to be completed by households in the week following the face-to-face interviews. The questionnaires explore different dimensions of well-being of the Georgian population, incorporating questions about household assets, income and consumption, employment and livelihoods, food security, access to health, education and social services and household coping strategies. The first stage of the survey was completed between May and July 2009 and it is planned to conduct the second stage one year later. A local company was contracted to conduct the field-work and the survey data were analysed by researchers at the University of York, UK.

Survey sample

The survey target sample consisted of households that participated in Household Integrated Survey (HIS) conducted by the Georgian National Statistics Office (Geostat) in 2008. The HIS used two-stage clustering with stratification by region, settlement size and mountain or lowland location. Geostat generously provided the survey company with 6758 target addresses, the aim being to achieve interviews with approximately 6000 households. In the event, successful interviews were held in 4808 households, a response rate of 71 per cent (Table 2.1). At 13 percent of target addresses, no-one was at home and in 7 per cent interviews were refused (Figure 2.1). In other cases addresses were unoccupied or household members had moved, died or were otherwise unable to respond.

In 162 of the 4808 households that were interviewed, collection of the diary data on weekly expenditure and food consumption proved impossible so that consumption measures could not be calculated. The base number of households is thus 4646 when analyzing consumption expenditure or related matters.

Some questions in the main survey sought data on households, others on individuals. For the latter, up to 14 people in each household provided responses. In total 17,372 individual people gave responses although not all individuals answered all questions.

Data weighting

Three weighting variables were developed, one for use with the 4808 households in which all parts of the survey were filled in and one for use with the 4646 households where only the main questionnaire was completed. The weights adjust the number of households to reflect the proportionate distribution between regions. The third is individual weights which are used on questions addressing individuals. 

Income and expenditure per equivalent adult (PAE)

In order to allow comparison between households of different size and composition, measures of income and expenditure are adjusted in the relevant parts of this report to amounts per equivalent adult (PAE). The calculation is based on that of the Georgia Department of Statistics. First an equivalent adult coefficient is calculated for each household (Table 2.2).

To correct for economies of scale in larger households, the number of equivalent adults is then raised to the power , where =1 for a single person household and =0.8 where household size is greater than one.

Comparison with other data

The Welfare Monitoring Survey panel survey is designed to measure the dynamics of welfare indicators with two stages conducted with a one year interval. The first (2009) stage of the survey is to serve as a baseline. Substantial data on the wellbeing of the Georgian population in previous years already exist (UNICEF Georgia Child Poverty Study 2007 and World Bank Georgia Poverty Assessment 2008). Using methods compatible with these studies enriches the analysis and provides a longer time frame for analysing the dynamics. However, there are limits to the comparisons that can be made. These stem from variation in the degree to which data can be disaggregated, the varying use of individuals and households as units of analysis, and the fact that the WMS is unique in the detail it provides on household consumption patterns.