This research is an Indicator Survey conducted in St. Kitts and Nevis between April and September 2011 as part of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Enterprise Survey 2010, an initiative of the World Bank. An Indicator Survey, which is similar to an Enterprise Survey, is implemented for smaller economies where the sampling strategies inherent in an Enterprise Survey are often not applicable due to the limited universe of firms.
In St. Kitts and Nevis, data from 150 establishments was analyzed. Stratified random sampling was used to select the surveyed businesses.
The objective of the survey is to obtain feedback from enterprises on the state of the private sector as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that will make it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. Through face-to-face interviews with firms in the manufacturing and services sectors, the survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators that are comparable across countries.
Questionnaire topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures.
Kind of data
Sample survey data [ssd]
Version
Version
Version 01
Coverage
Geographic coverage
St. Kitts Island
Geographic unit
Regions covered are selected based on the number of establishments, contribution to employment, and value added. In most cases these regions are metropolitan areas and reflect the largest centers of economic activity in a country.
Unit of analysis
The primary sampling unit of the study is the establishment. An establishment is a physical location where business is carried out and where industrial operations take place or services are provided. A firm may be composed of one or more establishments. For example, a brewery may have several bottling plants and several establishments for distribution. For the purposes of this survey an establishment must make its own financial decisions and have its own financial statements separate from those of the firm. An establishment must also have its own management and control over its payroll.
Universe
The whole population, or the universe, covered in the Enterprise Surveys is the non-agricultural economy. It comprises: all manufacturing sectors according to the ISIC Revision 3.1 group classification (group D), construction sector (group F), services sector (groups G and H), and transport, storage, and communications sector (group I). Note that this population definition excludes the following sectors: financial intermediation (group J), real estate and renting activities (group K, except sub-sector 72, IT, which was added to the population under study), and all public or utilities sectors.
Producers and sponsors
Authoring entity
Name
World Bank
Funding agencies
Name
World Bank
Sampling
Sampling procedure
The study was conducted using stratified random sampling. Three levels of stratification were used in the sample: firm sector, firm size, and geographic region.
Industry stratification for the Indicator Surveys is designed to obtain 75 interviews in manufacturing and 75 interviews in service sectors.
Size stratification was defined following the standardized definition for the Enterprise Surveys: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (more than 99 employees). For stratification purposes, the number of employees was defined on the basis of reported permanent full-time workers. This seems to be an appropriate definition of the labor force since seasonal/casual/part-time employment is not a common practice, except in the sectors of construction and agriculture.
Interviews were only conducted on the island of St. Kitts. Due to the size of the sample target, the entire island was treated as one geographical location.
The sample frame was produced from a variety of sources: the St. Kitts and Nevis Chamber of Commerce (2010), the St. Kitts and Nevis National Statistics Office (2008), the YellowPages, Caribseek, Manta.com, and the Value Added Tax Registry (2011). Due to the wide number of sources used, the contractor engaged in extensive validation procedures of the sample frame prior to launching fieldwork.
The sample frame was then used for the selection of a sample with the aim of obtaining interviews with 150 establishments with five or more employees.
The quality of the frame was assessed at the outset of the project through visits to a random subset of firms and local contractor knowledge. The sample frame was not immune from the typical problems found in establishment surveys: positive rates of non-eligibility, repetition, non-existent units, etc. In addition, the sample frame contains no telephone/fax numbers so the local contractor had to screen the contacts by visiting them. Due to response rate and ineligibility issues, additional sample had to be extracted by the World Bank in order to obtain enough eligible contacts and meet the sample targets.
Given the impact that non-eligible units included in the sample universe may have on the results, adjustments may be needed when computing the appropriate weights for individual observations. The percentage of confirmed non-eligible units as a proportion of the total number of sampled establishments contacted for the survey was 2.58% (7 out of 271 establishments).
Response rate
The number of realized interviews per contacted establishment was 0.55. The estimate is based on the total number of firms contacted including ineligible establishments. This number is the result of two factors: explicit refusals to participate in the survey, as reflected by the rate of rejection (which includes rejections of the screener and the main survey) and the quality of the sample frame, as represented by the presence of ineligible units. The number of rejections per contact was 0.49.
Complete information regarding the sampling methodology, sample frame, weights, response rates, and implementation can be found in "Description of St. Kitts and Nevis ES 2010 Implementation" in external resources.
Weighting
For some units it was impossible to determine eligibility because the contact was not successfully completed. Consequently, different assumptions as to their eligibility result in different universe cells' adjustments and in different sampling weights. Three sets of assumptions were considered:
a - Strict assumption: eligible establishments are only those for which it was possible to directly determine eligibility. The resulting weights, which include adjustments applied to panel firms, are in the variable w_strict_fresh.
b - Median assumption: eligible establishments are those for which it was possible to directly determine eligibility and those that rejected the screener questionnaire or an answering machine or fax was the only response. The resulting weights are included in the variable w_median_fresh.
c - Weak assumption: in addition to the establishments included in points a and b, all establishments for which it was not possible to contact or that refused the screening questionnaire are assumed eligible. This definition includes as eligible establishments with dead or out of service phone lines, establishments that never answered the phone, and establishments with incorrect addresses for which it was impossible to find a new address. Under the weak assumption only observed non-eligible units are excluded from universe projections. The resulting weights are included in the variable w_weak_fresh.
Data Collection
Dates of collection
Start
End
2011-04
2011-09
Mode of data collection
Face-to-face [f2f]
Data collection supervision
Complete information regarding the sampling methodology, sample frame, weights, response rates, and implementation can be found in "Description of St. Kitts and Nevis ES 2010 Implementation" in external resources.
Questionnaires
The current survey instruments are available:
- Services Questionnaire;
- Manufacturing Questionnaire;
- Screener Questionnaire.
The Services Questionnaire is administered to the establishments in the services sector. The Manufacturing Questionnaire is built upon the Services Questionnaire and adds specific questions relevant to manufacturing.
The survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90% of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country's business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.
Data collector(s)
Name
EEC Canada
Data Processing
Data editing
Data entry and quality controls are implemented by the contractor and data is delivered to the World Bank in batches (typically 10%, 50% and 100%). These data deliveries are checked for logical consistency, out of range values, skip patterns, and duplicate entries. Problems are flagged by the World Bank and corrected by the implementing contractor through data checks, callbacks, and revisiting establishments.
Confidentiality of the survey respondents and the sensitive information they provide is necessary to ensure the greatest degree of survey participation, integrity and confidence in the quality of the data. Surveys are usually carried out in cooperation with business organizations and government agencies promoting job creation and economic growth, but confidentiality is never compromised.
Access conditions
Aggregate indicators based on Enterprise Survey data are available to the public at https://www.enterprisesurveys.org.
Firm-level data is available to the public free-of-charge. In order to access the data, users must agree to abide by a strict confidentiality agreement available through Enterprise Analysis Unit website by clicking on "External users register here" at https://www.enterprisesurveys.org/Portal
Citation requirements
The use of this dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the identification of the Primary Investigator (including country name)
- the full title of the survey and its acronym (when available), and the year(s) of implementation
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download (for datasets disseminated online).
Example:
The World Bank. St. Kitts and Nevis Enterprise Survey (ES) 2010, Ref. KNA_2010_ES_v01_M_WB. Dataset downloaded from [URL] on [date].
Disclaimer and copyrights
Disclaimer
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.
Contacts
Contact(s)
Email
enterprisesurveys@worldbank.org
Metadata production
IDNo
DDI_KNA_2010_ES_v01_M_WB
Producers
Name
Affiliation
Role
Antonina Redko
DECDG, World Bank
DDI Documentation
Production date
2011-12-01
Version
v02
The label for variable c28 was changed in v02 (September 2012)