Family Resources Survey 2001-02
Survey response
The FRS aims to interview all adults in a household. A household is defined as fully co-operating when it meets this requirement. In addition, to count as fully co-operating, there must be less than 13 'don't know' or 'refusal' answers to monetary amount questions in the benefit unit schedule (i.e. excluding the assets section of the questionnaire).
Proxy interviews are accepted only under restricted circumstances. In 2001-02, for those households classed as fully co-operating, proxy responses were obtained for 15 per cent of adults.
If a household is partially co-operating, the minimum requirement is that a full interview has been obtained from the head of household's benefit unit.
It should be noted that all data shown in the main body of this publication refer to fully co-operating households.
Table M.1 
summarises the household response. The original sample chosen for 2001-02 consisted of 42,567 addresses. However, 3,916 were then found to be ineligible because they were not defined as private households or were empty households. A further 454 households had uncertain eligibility. Under the revised method for calculating sample sizes whereby some of the addresses with uncertain eligibility are assumed to be eligible, while others are not, this left an effective sample of 38,609 households. In total, 25,320 households fully co-operated (66 per cent), 395 only partially co-operated (one per cent) and 10,683 refused to proceed with the interview (28 per cent). The interviewer was unable to make contact with 1,799 households (five per cent).
The reasons for refusal are recorded. The most common reason for refusal given was the feeling that answering questions from the FRS would be an 'invasion of privacy' (28 per cent); followed by 26 per cent who said they 'couldn't be bothered' and 22 per cent who 'don't believe in surveys'. Concerns about confidentiality were only raised by seven per cent of households. Ten per cent said they 'disliked a survey of income'.
Table M.2 shows response rates broken down by Government Office Region. Response rates are calculated as follows:
Number of fully co-operating households x 100
Number of eligible households after adjustment
The overall response rate for the FRS for the year 2001-02 was 66 per cent.
The region with the highest response rate was Wales, where 70 per cent of all households selected responded fully, followed closely by the North East (69 per cent). The region with the lowest response rate was London where only 61 per cent of the chosen households fully co-operated. The variation in response rates reflects those of other major surveys and of the Census of Population, i.e. that response rates are generally lower in large city areas.
