Technological Development of Survey Weighted

Composite Index for Complex Survey Data

Developers (Lead and Associates)

Deepak Singh, Scientist, ICAR-IASRI, New Delhi
Pradip Basak, Assistant Professor, UBKV, West Bengal
Raju Kumar, Scientist, ICAR-IASRI, New Delhi
Tauqueer Ahmad, Head of Department, Division of Sample surveys, ICAR-IASRI, New
Delhi
 Introduction
 Recently, India was ranked quite below in Global Hunger Index even though India is
among the Major Agricultural Production Countries. There can be many reasons for it
but one of the potential reasons may be the methodology used in the development of
Index.
 The existing indices are developed using survey data but do not incorporate the survey
weights leading to biased estimates and erroneous rankings.

 Global Hunger Index  Global Food Security Index

 Food Insecurity Index  Human Development Index
 The Poverty and Hunger Index  Global Multidimensional Poverty Index

 Therefore, we developed a better and efficient Index methodology capable of

incorporating the survey weights present in survey data i.e. “Survey Weighted Principal
Component Analysis (SW-PCA) based Index”.
 Validation of Developed methodology

The developed methodology was compared with the existing methodology and it
is proved through

1. Simulation on the artificial data

2. Simulation on the real data (NSS 68th round data)

that the developed methodology is efficient than existing methodology.

 Stakeholders

• The existing indices based on survey data are developed by ignoring the survey
weights by government as well as international organisations which is leading to
biased ranking of units and erroneous results. Through this study the research
community is encouraged to use the better and efficient index methodology for
ranking of subjects.

• Policy makers, Researchers, Students and Scientists, Economists etc.

• Survey organizations, Research Organizations, NGO’s and Government

Organizations like NSSO, CSO, Niti Ayog etc. dealing with survey data.
 Real data Application
• NSS 68th Round data on Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES), is used for
developing Survey Weighted Food Consumption Index (FCI)
• FCI is developed using twelve variables related to consumption
• The FCI is used for ranking the states within India on the basis of their consumption
behaviour.
• By testing the proposed index development methodology on NSS 68th Round data with
the existing methodology, it is found out that

1. The proposed methodology which includes the survey weights in the development of
index is more efficient than the existing methods of indices development.
2. There is significant change in the ranking of states when the survey weights are used in
the development of index in comparison to methods of indices construction that do not
include survey weights.
 Significance/relevance at the state, national and International level
 The Index has a very high national and international priority as we can recently see
the rankings of the developing nations like India has a lower rank in indices like Global
Hunger index. Therefore it is highly recommended to incorporate the survey weights
into the development of indices like Global Hunger Index.
 Widely recognized large-scale surveys have complex survey designs like
 National Sample Surveys (NSS),
 National Family Health Surveys (NFHS),
 National Surveys of Children's Health (NSCH), and
 National Nutrition Surveys (NNS)
 European Social Surveys (ESS),
 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)
Some of the existing indices are
Global Hunger Index,
Food Insecurity Index,
The Poverty and Hunger Index,
Human Security Index (HIS),
The Baseline Climate and Food Insecurity Index,
Global Food Security Index,
Human Development Index,
Global Multidimensional Poverty Index.
Livelihood Index
Niti Ayog’s Health Index, Multidimensional Poverty Index and SDG India Index
 Potential Use
The developed methodology can be used to develop efficient indices (Health
index, Hunger index, Livelihood Index, Nutrition index, Socio-economic indices
etc.) based on survey data like
 National Sample Surveys (NSS),
 National Family Health Surveys (NFHS),
 National Surveys of Children's Health (NSCH), and
 National Nutrition Surveys (NNS)
 European Social Surveys (ESS),
 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) etc.
Thank You
Papers Published

Singh, D., Basak, P., Kumar, R. and Ahmad, T. (2023). On the methodological framework of composite
index under complex surveys and its application in development of food consumption index for India.
Front. Appl. Math. Stat. 9:1274530.
doi: 10.3389/fams.2023.1274530
(NAAS Rating: 7.5)

Singh, D., Basak, P., Ahmad, T., Kumar, R. and Rai, A. (2023). Development of Survey Weighted
Composite Indices under Complex Surveys. Statistics and Applications, 22(1), 73–82.
(NAAS Rating: 5.67)