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A new round of the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) will be launched in late September this year to collect up-to-date information on the expenditure patterns of households in Hong Kong. The information will be used for updating the expenditure weights of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) series.
The Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) conducts an HES once every five years. The survey will be conducted continuously to collect data for a whole year in order to capture all seasonal variations in household expenditure patterns.
A sample of about 12 000 living quarters has been selected for the survey under a scientifically designed sampling scheme. The one-year survey period is broken down into 26 cycles, with each cycle comprising two weeks. Each household in the sample will be invited to take part in one cycle and requested to keep expenditure diaries for the specified 14 days.
About two weeks before commencement of each survey cycle, letters will be issued to the sampled living quarters inviting the households there to participate in the survey. The invitation letters for the first survey cycle will be issued early next week.
Interviewers, whose names are shown on the invitation letters, will call on households in the selected living quarters within two weeks after despatch of the letter to explain the purposes and data requirements of the survey. Each interviewer will carry a staff identity card and a certificate issued by C&SD authorising him/her to conduct the survey. Householders should check carefully the identity of the interviewer before admitting him/her to their premises.
The questionnaire used in the HES is designed in the form of an expenditure diary. A household member will need to spend some ten minutes a day in recording his/her expenditures in the day in the diary.
The 2014/15 HES is conducted under Part IIIA of the Census and Statistics Ordinance (Cap. 316). Information collected in this survey which may enable identification of individual households will be kept in strict confidence. The information collected will be used strictly for statistical purposes only.
The results of the HES are essential for the compilation of the CPI series. The CPI is an important economic indicator which measures changes in the price level of consumer goods and services generally purchased by households.
The current CPI series are compiled based on the expenditure patterns obtained from the 2009/10 HES. The results of the 2014/15 HES, which will be available around mid-2016, will be used to update the expenditure weights of the CPIs.
For enquiries about the 2014/15 HES, please contact the Price Analysis & Research Section of the C&SD at telephone number 3586 3600 or email address hesurvey@censtatd.gov.hk.
Ends/Friday, September 19, 2014
Issued at HKT 16:33
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