SPC_TON_2023_HFPS-Q2_v01_M_v01_A_PUF
High Frequency Phone Survey, Continuous Data Collection 2023
Quarter 2 2023 to Quarter 4 2024
HFPS 2023
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Tonga | TON |
Other Household Survey [hh/oth]
After two rounds of data collection in 2022, monthly High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) data collection commenced in April 2023 and continued until November 2024 (but with some gaps in the months of collection).
Access to up-to-date socio-economic data is a widespread challenge in Tonga and other Pacific Island Countries. To increase data availability and promote evidence-based policymaking, the Pacific Observatory provides innovative solutions and data sources to complement existing survey data and analysis. One of these data sources is a series of High Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS), which began in 2020 as a way to monitor the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and since 2023 has grown into a series of continuous surveys for socio-economic monitoring. See <https> for further details.
For Tonga, after two rounds of data collection from in 2022, monthly HFPS data collection commenced in April 2023 and continued until November 2024 (but with some gaps in the months of collection). The survey collected socio-economic data on topics including employment, income, food security, health, food prices, assets and well-being. Each month of collection has approximately 415 households in the sample and is representative of urban and rural areas. This dataset contains combined monthly survey data for all months of the continuous HFPS in Tonga.
Sample survey data [ssd]
Individual and household.
Cleaned, labelled and anonymized version of the master file provided by the World Bank.
2025-04-11
-HOUSEHOLD: Interview information and Basic information (S1); Household roster (S2); Food security and food prices (S4); Household income (S5); Agriculture (S6); Social protection (S7); Access to services (S8); Assets (S9); Follow up (S11)
-INDIVIDUAL: Interview information (S1); Labor (S3); Education (S10).
National urban and rural areas (5 islands): Tongatapu, Vava'u, Ha'apai, Eua, Ongo Niua
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Shohei Nakamura | World Bank |
| William Seitz | World Bank |
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Pacific Observatory | |
| International Bank for Reconstruction and Development | World Bank Group |
| Sistemas Integrales Consulting Ltda | World Bank Group |
| Name | Abbreviation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| World Bank Group | WBG | Funding |
| Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade | DFAT | Funding |
The Tonga High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) monthly sample was generated in three ways. The first method is Random Digit Dialing (RDD) process covering all cell telephone numbers active at the time of the sample selection. The RDD methodology generates virtually all possible telephone numbers in the country under the national telephone numbering plan and then draws a random sample of numbers. This method guarantees full coverage of the population with a phone.
First, a large first-phase sample of cell phone numbers was selected and screened through an automated process to identify the active numbers. Then, a smaller second-phase sample was selected from the active residential numbers identified in the first-phase sample and was delivered to the data collection team to be called by the interviewers. When a cell phone was called, the call answerer was interviewed as long as he or she was 18 years of age or above and knowledgeable about the household activities.
It was initially planned to stratify the sample by island group based on the phone number prefixes. However, this was not feasible given the high internal migration across islands and the atypical assignment of phone number prefixes across islands in Tonga. The raw sample is overrepresenting urban areas and the population of Tongatapu.
Tonga High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) monthly data collection includes only household-level data. The household weighting process involves the following five steps:
Adjusted weights of respondent households were calibrated to reflect the country distribution of households by island group, sex, age and educational attainment of the household head, the average household size and the average household's wealth status according to the 2016 Tonga Population Census and the 2019 Tonga Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).
Survey methodology literature and experience show that cell phone survey results tend to be biased towards male, younger and more educated individuals than the overall population, and towards poorer households. This is due to both cell phone ownership patterns (coverage bias) and differential response rates (nonresponse bias). Such overrepresentation of male, younger and more educated individuals and better-off households can be compensated via weight calibration adjustment. Among the existing calibration techniques, the monthly data collection applied the raking method using the logit distance function. The raking margins were based on 2016 Census household counts by island groups and MICS relative distribution of households by household heads' sex, age, education level, household size, and wealth index based on MICS data.
The questionnaire was developed in both English and Tongan and can be found in this documentation in Excel format. Sections of the Questionnaire are provided below:
For consistency purposes, all categorical levels were labeled identically across variables, where applicable.
The data is then analyzed and published on a Dashboard. Link: https://dataviz.worldbank.org/views/Dashboard_v19/Labor?:embed=y&:iid=1&:isGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y#3 <https Labor?:embed=y&:iid isGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y>
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-04-01 | 2024-11-30 | Data collection |
| Name |
|---|
| Sistemas Integrales Consulting |
The survey management team of Sistemas Integrales included a Project Manager, a Data Manager, two survey statisticians, one quality control officer, and one data analyst. The data collection was carried out every other week for five working days and resting a week in between. It was conducted by 10 interviewers, 2 supervisors and one local coordinator provided by 3SMT, a local survey firm hired by Sistemas Integrales Consulting (SIC). The local team also included one auditor hired by SIC and external to 3SMT.
At the end of data collection, the raw dataset was cleaned by the survey firm and the World Bank team. Data cleaning mainly included formatting, relabeling, and excluding survey monitoring variables (e.g., interview start and end times). Data was edited using the software Stata.
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Shohei Nakamura | World Bank | snakamura2@worldbank.org |
| Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? | Confidentiality declaration text |
|---|---|
| yes | Before being granted access to the dataset, all users must formally agree: 1. To make no copies of any files or portions of files to which s/he is granted access except those authorized by the data depositor. 2. Not to use any technique in an attempt to learn the identity of any person, establishment, or sampling unit not identified on public use data files. 3. To hold in strictest confidence the identification of any establishment or individual that may be inadvertently revealed in any document, discussion, or analysis. Such inadvertent identification revealed in her/his analysis needs to be immediately brought to the attention of the data depositor. |
The dataset has been anonymized and is available as a Public Use Dataset. It is accessible to all for statistical and research purposes only, under the following terms and conditions:
"Tonga, High Frequency Phone Survey Q2 2023 to Q4 2024, Continuous Data Collection 2023 (HFPS 2023-Q2), Version 01 of the licensed dataset (April 2025), provided by the Pacific Data Hub - Microdata Library. https://microdata.pacificdata.org/index.php/home"
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Shohei Nakamura | World Bank | snakamura2@worldbank.org |
DDI_SPC_TON_2023_HFPS-Q2_v01_M_v01_A_PUF
| Name | Abbreviation | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statistics for Development Division | SDD | Pacific Community (SPC) | Documentation of the survey |
2025-04-14
Version 01 (April 2025): This is the first attempt at documenting the first continuous data collection of Quarter 2 2023 to Quarter 4 2024 of Tonga. Done by Statistics for Development Division at Noumea, New Caledonia.