General Household Survey 2002

South Africa, 2002

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Reference ID

zaf-statssa-ghs-2002-v1.3

Producer(s)

Statistics South Africa

Collections

South African Household Survey Data

Metadata

Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Aug 29, 2011

Last modified

Jun 16, 2026

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159196

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12173

Identification

Survey ID number

zaf-statssa-ghs-2002-v1.3

Title

General Household Survey 2002

Abbreviation or Acronym

GHS 2002

Country

Name	Country code
South Africa	zaf

Study type

Household Survey [hh]

Series Information

Statistics South Africa. General Household Survey 2002 [dataset]. Version 1.3. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa [producer], 2017. Cape Town. DataFirst [distributor], 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/d2xh-m039

Abstract

The GHS is an annual household survey specifically designed to measure the living circumstances of South African households. The GHS collects data on education, employment, health, housing and household access to services.

Kind of Data

Sample survey data

Unit of Analysis

Households and individuals

Version

Version Description

v1.3 Edited, anonymised dataset for public distribution

Version Date

2017

Version Notes

Version 1:

"Birth and child" questions were asked in section 3 of the questionnaire. However, the original release of version 1 did not contain these questions. On request, Statistics SA provided DataFirst with these data files. They have been made available to the public for analysis. The Child data file has incomplete data for the variable q315aliv.

“Birth and child” questions were no longer asked in the future GHS. Section 3 was replaced by “tourism” section in GHS 2003.

Version 1.1:

Version 1.1 included new weights for comparability across GHS 2002-2008. Version 1.1 was released at the same time as the GHS 2008 (6 May 2010). Person files were reweighted to reflect Community Survey 2007 results and update the estimates of the impact of HIV/Aids on demographic trends in South Africa. Household files were weighted independently of the person files in v1.1. The reweighting procedure was discussed in the report: "Reweighting of the GHS 2002-2008 data series".

As part of the revision process, some observations were removed. The following variables were renamed wherever applicable: c_gender (to “gender”), d_age (to “age”), e_race (to “race”). The following mismatches were found between v1 and v1.1: "status1 & "status2" in the worker file

Version 1.2:

Version 1.2 includes the new weights for comparability across GHS 2002-2011. Version 1.2 was released at the same time as the GHS 2012 (22 August 2013). Reweighting was necessary in order to maintain the comparability of population estimates used in the GHS based on figures provided by the 2013 mid-year population estimation model that incorporates the demographic findings of Census 2011. Household files were weighted independently of person files.

“geotype” “metro” added to house and person file

“head_age” added to house file

The following variable from the worker file contains a mismatch with v1.1: "q26indus"

Version 1.3:

Version 1.3 includes new weights for comparability across GHS 2002-2017. Version 1.3 was released at the same time as GHS 2017 (21 June 2018). It was decided to replace the 2013 series Mid-year population estimates in the previous version with a the more recent 2017 series Mid Year Population Estimates as benchmarks for weighting the GHS data files. Household files were weighted independently of person files.

Scope

Notes

The scope of the General Household Survey 2002 includes:
Household characteristics: Dwelling type, home ownership, access to water and sanitation facilities, access to services, transport, household assets, land ownership, agricultural production
Individuals' characteristics: demographic characteristics, relationship to household head, marital status, language, education, employment, income, health, disability, access to social services, mortality.
Women's characteristics: fertility

Coverage

Geographic Coverage

GHS 2002 is representative at national level and at provincial level.

Geographic Unit

The lowest level of geographic aggregations is province.

Universe

The survey cover all de jure household members (usual residents) of households in the nine provinces of South Africa and residents in workers' hostels. The survey does not cover collective living quarters such as students' hostels, old age homes, hospitals, prisons and military barracks.

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators

Name	Affiliation
Statistics South Africa	Government of South Africa

Sampling

Sampling Procedure

The sample is multi-stage stratified using probability proportional to size principles. The first stage is stratification by province, then by type of area within each province. Primary sampling units (PSUs) are then selected proportionally within each stratum (urban or non-urban) in all provinces. Altogether 3000 PSUs are selected. Within each PSU ten dwelling units are selected systematically for enumeration.

Survey instrument

Questionnaires

Data collection

Dates of Data Collection

Start	End
2002-07	2002-08

Data Collection Mode

Face-to-face [f2f]

Data Collectors

Name	Affiliation	Abbreviation
Statistics South Africa	Government of South Africa	SSA

Data appraisal

Data Appraisal

Earlier versions of the GHS datasets 2002 to 2007 include a District Council variable. This is no longer available in the later versions issued by Statistics SA. They caution that although the GHS 2005-2007 sample was designed to report at DC level, estimations are not reliable at this level. The 2008 - 2013 sample was designed to report at provincial and metro level. However, StatsSA did not take the absent population at metro into account when weighting the data and therefore this data is not reliable at Metro level.

The new programs that were introduced for weighting of the general household surveys from 2008 onwards, discard all records with missing values for age, sex or population group (for observations at household level, they are the values for age, sex or population group of the household head). This means that missing values of those variables were imputed. The emphasis was on obtaining reliable imputations rather than a 100% imputation rate, so some persons/households were discarded during the weighting.

In the GHS 2002 v1.3 data the response codes for variable Q429Hect on the size of agricultural land of the household do not match the response codes in the metadata. The codes in the metadata document are correct. DataFirst will upload the corrected GHS 2002 household data file once this is received from Statistics SA.

access_policy

Access authority

Name	Affiliation	URL	Email
DataFirst	University of Cape Town		support@data1st.org

Confidentiality

Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required?
no

Access conditions

Public use files, available to all

Citation requirements

Special Permissions

Indicate if special permissions are required to access a resource
no

Contacts

Name	Affiliation	Email	URL
DataFirst Helpdesk	University of Cape Town	support@data1st.org

Metadata production

Producers

Name	Affiliation	Role
DataFirst	University of Cape Town	Metadata Producer

Date of Metadata Production

2020-10-08

Metadata version

DDI Document version

Version 5

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