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Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey 2013

Bulgaria, 2013
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Open Society Institute-Sofia, World Bank
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Identification

Survey ID Number
BGR_2013_BLISS_v01_M
Title
Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey 2013
Country
Name Country code
Bulgaria BGR
Study type
Other Household Survey [hh/oth]
Series Information
Countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe have been particularly affected by the global economic crisis. In response to crisis, governments, donors, and civil society organizations have been cooperating to conduct Crisis Monitoring Surveys that assess social and economic impacts of the crisis on households and individuals. Crisis Monitoring Surveys rely on modules that are specifically tailored to assess household circumstances in a crisis and provide real-time, nationally representative data that can inform policy.

Stand-alone Crisis Monitoring Surveys have been conducted in Turkey, Montenegro, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria and Tajikistan. A number of countries (Latvia, Croatia, Serbia, and Armenia) have also included Crisis Monitoring Modules into routinely conducted Labor Force or Household Budget Surveys. In Romania, Serbia, and Turkey, representative household surveys have been combined with non-representative qualitative data collection to understand the effect of the crisis on vulnerable groups, including Roma.

In Bulgaria, Crisis Monitoring Survey (CMS) included three rounds conducted every six months to track the impact of the economic crisis over time. The baseline data was collected during the first round in February 2010. The other rounds were fielded in October 2010 and February 2011.

The Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey (BLISS) was conducted in March and April 2013, as a continuation of Crisis Monitoring Survey, with an additional module about the skills of the adult population in Bulgaria.

BLISS and all three rounds of CMS are documented in the World Bank Microdata Library.
Abstract
The Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey (BLISS) was conducted in March and May 2013 by Open Society Institute-Sofia and the World Bank. This survey is a continuation of the panel Crisis Monitoring Survey (CMS), with an additional module on the cognitive and socio-emotional skills of the adult population in Bulgaria.

The main purpose of BLISS is to analyze the major barriers to activation (such as skills gaps and mismatches, informational asymmetries, and/or disincentives inherent in the tax-benefit schemes) for different groups (such as women, older workers, and Roma) through an understanding of the labor markets' behavior. The BLISS was conducted using the same panel of households as the CMS for the main sample and the "booster" (Roma) sample. BLISS is treated as an additional round of CMS in the longitudinal analysis, as well as a cross-sectional survey.
Kind of Data
Sample survey data [ssd]
Unit of Analysis
- households,
- individuals

Version

Version Description
v01, edited, anonymous datasets
Version Notes
Variable values labels for "other" response options cannot be read due to a decoding problem. English translation of these labels is not available.

Scope

Notes
The scope of the study includes:
- demographic characteristics of household members,
- labor,
- housing,
- assets,
- social assistance
- unemployment,
- active labor market programs,
- social protection,
- other income,
- credit,
- subjective questions,
- attitudes,
- personality and behavior,
- computer skills,
- memory,
- language skills,
- quantitative skills

Coverage

Geographic Coverage
National

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators
Name
Open Society Institute-Sofia
World Bank
Funding Agency/Sponsor
Name
Open Society Institute-Sofia
World Bank

Sampling

Sampling Procedure
The BLISS was conducted using the same panel of households as Crisis Monitoring Survey.

Two samples were used in Crisis Monitoring Survey: main sample and booster sample.

The main sample was created in two stages.

First, the population was stratified by district (NUTS 3) and type of settlement. In Bulgaria, there are 28 administrative districts. For the type of settlement three categories were defined - rural, urban (with population under 50,000) and metropolitan (with population over 50,000). Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, is include in the metropolitan category. In this way 28 x 3=84 categories (strata) were defined and proportional allocation was made. The method of selecting settlements from each stratum is simple random sampling with replacement, weighted by the number of households in the settlement.

In the second stage, voting stations were chosen in each settlement. Voting stations were used as a type of cluster. Voting stations were selected with probability proportional to the number of voters in each station. In each cluster, (voting station), 20 household addresses were randomly selected from the list of all addresses in the station. The first 10 addresses, which had to be visited mandatorily, formed the main list. If there was a refusal in a household of the main list, this household had to be replaced with an address from the list of reserves (the last 10 addresses).

For the Roma booster sample, an expert database was used. It contained basic information for all segregated neighborhoods in the country like locality (district, municipality and settlement), an experts' approximation for the number of population, number of households, number of houses and other characteristics. The planned booster size sample was 300 households. Simple random sampling without replacement was used in segregated neighborhoods, weighted by their population. In this way, 30 segregated neighborhoods in 20 districts were selected. In each district, 10 randomly sampled households had to be interviewed. GPS sampling was used to identify households in each cluster.

In BLISS, there were five types of addresses:
- All the households from the first wave, regardless if they were interviewed in the second and third waves or not;
- Addresses of the households only from the second and third waves;
- Addresses of the households only from the third wave;
- Addresses of the households only from the second wave;
- Additional addresses to complete the list to 2,400 households.

In BLISS, 2,239 main sample households and 285 booster sample households were interviewed.
Response Rate
The planned size of the main sample in the first round was 2,384 households, 99% of this sample was realized. The planned size of the Roma booster sample was 296 households, 99% of this sample was realized.

For each cluster, there was a list of 10 addresses that had to be visited by the interviewer and an additional 10 addresses in reserve. If any of the first 10 addresses did not exist, dwellings were locked for a long time or the people refused to be interviewed, the additional ones were used. According to instructions, the interviewer had to visit each address in the main list three times, unless the building (or appartment) was obviously uninhabited. The interviewer had to write down what happened at each visit to each address on the list. At addresses where the interview did not take place, the interviewer noted the reason. Once an interview was done, the questionnaire got an ID that showed whether the address was on the original list or not.
Weighting
Detailed information about weighting procedures is available in the document "Sample Design and Weighting Procedures for Bulgaria Crisis Monitoring Survey (CMS) and the Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey (BLISS)" in Related Materials.

Data Collection

Dates of Data Collection
Start End
2013-03 2013-05
Data Collection Mode
Face-to-face [f2f]

Questionnaires

Questionnaires
The questionnaire used in BLISS is similar to Crisis Monitoring Survey questionnaire, but it has an additional module on cognitive and socio-emotional skills of the adult (18-65) population.

Access policy

Contacts
Name Affiliation Email
Silvia Guallar Artal GSPDR, World Bank sguallarartal@worldbank.org
Victoria Levin GSPDR, World Bank vlevin@worldbank.org
Citation requirements
Use of the dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the Identification of the Primary Investigator
- the title of the survey (including country, acronym and year of implementation)
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download

Example:

Open Society Institute-Sofia, World Bank. Bulgarian Longitudinal Inclusive Society Survey (BLISS) 2013. Ref. BGR_2013_BLISS_v01_M. Dataset downloaded from [URL] on [date].

Metadata production

DDI Document ID
DDI_BGR_2013_BLISS_v01_M_WB
Producers
Name Abbreviation Affiliation Role
Development Data Group DECDG World Bank Study documentation
Date of Metadata Production
2015-09-03
DDI Document version
v01 (September 2015)