1.3 Surveys’ Frame

The DoS conducted an agricultural census in 2007, which provided a comprehensive frame used for the purposes of sampling design and calculating the raising factors for all agricultural surveys.

1.4 Sample Design

Several sampling designs were used in the agricultural surveys of 2015 For each survey, the DoS used the most appropriate and efficient design (which provides maximum accuracy with least cost) as follows:

1.4.2 Livestock Surveys

A – Sheep and Goats Numbers Survey

All holdings raising 400 heads or more of sheep and goats were covered by a comprehensive survey, because the total number of these holdings is small while its contribution to the total number is large. The Kingdom was divided into 12 strata where each governorate is considered as a stratum.

The localities in each governorate are organized according to the number of sheep and goats, and then a sample size of 15% is selected per year in each governorate using the Regular Sampling Method. This sample is valid for 7 years and called the Progressive Sample, noting that the agricultural year for this survey starts on 1/11 and ends on 31/10 of the next year.

B – The Organized Farms Survey

Due to the small number and the relative importance of the mother stock farms, layers farms and hatchers, a comprehensive survey has been conducted. Meanwhile, the Stratified Random Sampling Method is used for the other kinds of the organized farms. The organized farms of dairy cattle and broilers are divided into categories according to the farm capacity. Meanwhile, a sample of 10% from each stratum is selected with the exception of the fifth stratum, where all farms are surveyed due to their small number and big contribution to the livestock numbers and production as shown in the following table. The agricultural year for this survey starts on 1/1 and ends on 31/12.(Table.1)

Table 1: Number of Broiler and Dairy Cattle Farms by Stratum

Stratum	Broiler		Dairy cattle
	Stratum (Bird)	No.	Stratum (Head)	No.
First	Less than 5000	396	Less than 20	115
Second	5000-9999	1046	20-39	324
Third	10000-14999	435	40-99	283
Fourth	15000-29999	282	100-199	139
Fifth	30000 or more	137	200 or more	119
Total		2296		980

 

C -The Unorganized cattle holdings survey (Household Breeding)

The Kingdom was divided into 12 strata where each governorate is considered as a stratum. The localities in each governorate are organized according to number of cattle, and then a sample size of 10% is selected per year in each stratum using the Regular Sampling Method.

D –The Livestock Production and Input Survey

A sample size of 25% was selected from the Sheep and Goats Numbers Survey and unorganized cattle holdings survey. The organized farms were covered by comprehensive survey.

2. The Preparatory Stage

2.1 Surveys^, Main Documents

2.1.1 Surveys^, Questionnaires

Data were collected using a special questionnaire for each survey which includes introductory information about the holder and the agricultural holding. The data of the livestock surveys are collected by using many questionnaires. In one of these questionnaires, the numbers of livestock are collected through two rounds in the agricultural year, each field round has a defined reference period. There is also another questionnaire for collecting the production data and production inputs of the informal sector at year end. Meanwhile, quarterly data on the formal sector are collected by using a questionnaire designed for this purpose.

The agricultural prices survey questionnaire consists of two parts, the first to collect data on the production inputs, the second to collect data related to the selling prices of the products, and marketing costs incurred by the farmers.

2.1.2 Instructions Manual:

The instructions manual contains detailed explanation of all questions, definitions, concepts, tasks and duties of field workers. It includes also the edit rules that should be followed when editing the questionnaire in the field or in the office in order to have free of error and complete questionnaires.

2.1.3 Coding Manual:

The coding manual includes codes for all items mentioned in the questionnaires related to the agricultural products, production inputs according to the Central Product Classification (CPC) issued by the U.N.

2.2 Definitions and Classifications

Agricultural Holding: It is an economic unit for agricultural production under single management, comprising all livestock kept and all land used wholly or partly for agricultural production purposes, regardless of title, legal form, or size. Single management may be exercised by an individual or household, jointly by two or more individuals or households, by a clan or a tribe, or by juridical person such as a corporation, cooperative or government agency. The holding’s land may consist of one or more parcels, located in one or more separate areas or in one or more territorial or administrative division, providing the parcels share the same production means utilized by the holding, such as labour, farm buildings, machinery or draught animals. The requirement of sharing the same production means utilized by the holding is necessary if the various parcels are to be considered as components of one economic unit.

Economic units engaged solely in the following economic activities are not considered agricultural holdings and are therefore excluded from any census or survey:

– Hunting, trapping and game propagation.

– Forestry and logging.

– Fishing.

– Agricultural services.

Permanent Worker: He is a paid person whose services are utilized regularly and continuously during the agricultural year for agricultural works in the holding.

Occasional Worker: Every paid person works in a holding for the duration of one-third to two-thirds of the agricultural year (4-8) months.

Casual Worker: Every paid person works in a holding for the duration of less than one-third of the agricultural year (less than 4) months.

Livestock Holder: The holder is a person who makes major decisions regarding resources use and exercises management control over the livestock holding operation. He has technical and economic responsibility for the holding and may undertake all responsibilities or shares it with others. For the purpose of this survey the livestock holder is anyone owns at least ten heads of sheep and goats or one head of female cow or three heads of camels or five beehives or thirty domestic birds or rabbit or commercial farms or a hatchery.

Total Livestock Production or Gross output: It is the value of goods and services that are produced within a specific period of time as a result of practicing principal or secondary productive activity, including goods and services produced for personal and internal use.

2.3 Organization of Survey Staff

The organization of the survey staff who participated in the administrative and field activities was as follows:

Survey Administration Staff: It consisted of the Director General of Statistics as the Survey National Director and the Director of the Agricultural Statistics Directorate as the Survey Executive Director. The latter is supported by his technical, field and administrative subject–matter aides.

The Head of Field Section: He is the person in charge of the administration and execution of fieldwork operations in terms of planning of major daily field operations according to the specified timetable of the survey. He is the liaison between the fieldwork teams and the survey administration and provides it with progress reports. He is selected from the most qualified DoS staff with long experience in census and survey field operations.

Superintendent: Each Superintendent leads and administers a number of supervisors (i.e. team leaders) in terms of planning their daily and weekly work assignments in cooperation with the Head of Field Section. In addition, he assigns daily work to the supervisors and provides them with necessary survey documents and other needs. He also provides the Head of Field Section with office and field work progress reports. He should also perform final checking on a sample of questionnaires in the field as well as in the office. The Superintendent is the liaison between the field supervisors and the Head of Field Section.

Supervisor: Supervisors are team leaders in charge of implementing the daily work assignments. Each supervisor leads a team of 3 interviewers. He is responsible for assigning daily work to each interviewer under his mandate. He accompanies his team at all times in the field, manages and checks their work, and solves any field problems or inconveniences. He also provides the Superintendent with daily progress reports. Supervisors are selected from among those with long field experience.

Interviewer: The major task of the interviewer is to visit the sample holdings and fill in the required questionnaires. The interviewer reviews each questionnaire before leaving the holder to make sure that he had covered all applicable questions. Interviewers are selected from university graduates with relevant subject matter specializations.

Editor: Editors are in charge of reviewing the questionnaires and detecting errors, if any, and returning erroneous ones to the field whenever possible. The editors communicate with the Head of Field Section and the survey administration through supervisors and Superintendents for technical consultations and to speed the work progress.

2.4 Selection and Training of Staff

The supervisory and executive levels of the survey staff were selected according to their past experience in censuses and surveys, familiarity with geographic areas, and educational qualification. It is noteworthy that all survey staff were university graduates.

The survey administration designed a training plan for the different levels of survey staff before fielding the survey. A classroom-training program was held in the survey headquarters. The program focused on survey objectives, data collection procedures, confidentiality of data, and how to deal with households and overcome difficulties. The program also included a detailed explanation of the questionnaire inputs, concepts and instructions related to data collection and field editing. The staff was trained on supervisory tasks, organization of work, required specific tasks and assignments, sampling method and distribution of work over the country.

In addition to the above training, further classroom and field practices demonstrated how to fill in the questionnaire. Errors emerged from these applications were detected and explained to the field staff.

An additional training program was designed for office processors (editors and coders) on edit rules and data consistency checks. The coders were also trained on coding rules and procedures. Also, computer subject-matter specialists trained keyers on data entry and verification and selected office-processing staff on how to detect and correct error lists.

3. Data Collection Stage

3.1. Organization of Fieldwork

The field work is executed by trained interviewers under supervision of the supervisors. Interviewers are divided into teams consisting of 3 interviewers and a supervisor. The field work is supervised by a the Head of Field Section. The numbers of field teams in these surveys were 15 teams.

3.2. Data Collection

The survey data are collected through direct personal interviews on several rounds. Before the field teams go to their work areas, the Head of Field Section provides each field supervisor with all the requirements, such as questionnaires, stationary in addition to the allocated work area and the work plan. The supervisor accompanies the team everyday and distributes the work on interviewers during their visits to the holders. He prepares and submits weekly progress reports to the Head of Field Section and exchanges views or consultancies with him regarding work progress and field problems.

Concerning agricultural prices data is collected electronically using PDA through personal interviews of holders monthly.

3.3. Field Editing

The completed questionnaires are edited daily in the field as fellows:

The team supervisors selected a sample of questionnaires completed by the enumerator while following up the work process in the field. He checks the questionnaires and rectifies any errors contained in them immediately during the presence of the team in the field.

The Superintendent takes a sample of the questionnaires completed by the enumerators in his work area for editing in order to correct the errors and to direct the enumerators to avoid repeating such errors.

The office editing team stationed in work centers (counting) checks all questionnaires that they receive everyday to ensure soundness of completed information and returning any incorrect questionnaires to the field for correcting the mistakes.

The technical and administration staff often visited the field staff at work areas in different governorates to oversee their performance and work progress as well as to help in solving any difficulties or problems.

4. Data Processing Stage

The organization of questionnaires is an important step in the data processing stage. Hence, the questionnaires were ordered, labeled and stored in a special archive in a way that facilitates easy and quick handling for subsequent processes. A special record shows the progress of work in all the sample areas, as well as the flow of questionnaires between the office processing staff and the computer processors.

4.1. Office Processing

All completed and field-edited questionnaires were batched and sent to the survey head office where they were further edited. The editing process focused on the completeness and consistency of data in the questionnaires in order to minimize errors before starting the electronic data processing stage.

4.2. Electronic Processing

This stage began by assigning a liaison officer to provide the data entry division with the edited and coded questionnaires, using a special flow record. The questionnaires were sent to the said division in the form of batches and returned to the liaison officer in the same way after completing data entry process.

The data keyers were trained by a subject- matter person on entry procedures and rules using the already prepared systems and programs. The available computers were fully utilized to accelerate the data entry process. The data were entered in a way that prompt mechanical editing can be made via entry screens, where focus was placed on completeness of data and whether the coded values lie within the valid range. During data entry, the consistency checks were applied to ensure that the keyed data are consistent with each other as well as with other variables.

4.3 Tabulation and Dissemination of Results

When all prior data processing steps were completed, the actual survey results were tabulated using an ORACLE package. The tabulations were then thoroughly checked for consistency of data, titles, inputs, concepts, as well as the figures there in. The final report was then prepared, containing detailed tabulations as well as the methodology of the survey.

Aims of External Trade

External trade division aims to:

1. Issue monthly reports and comprehensive annual publication reports covering External trade Statistics.
2. Providing a comprehensive statistical database for External Trade Statistics monthly   and annual reports by commodity and countries.
3. Monitoring of trade exchange between countries (The trade balance).
4. Providing the searchers, planners and decision makers with accurate information’s about External Trade.

Data sources of External Trade Statistics

1. Customs diclarations issued by the Jordanian Customs Department,.through the Customs offices linked to the system computerization of customs procedures which is called (AsycudaWorld System ).Asycuda World is an Automated System for Customs Data and aims to raise the efficiency of collection and contributing to trade liberalization by simplifying customs procedures and reduce the time needed for cargo clearance system, as it includes advanced concepts. This system also provides accurate administrative statistics and information  required for good planning .
2. Customs data from the Centers not computerized (paper copies)and the monthly reports from companies such as (Potash Company, Phosphate, and the Jordanian Petroleum Refinery Company, Royal Jordanian, the National Electricity Company, and the Ministry of Agriculture and the Indian company).The data related to the main commodities of these companies are considered as an official data by our Department .

Functions Of Workers At The Foreign Trade Division

There are (9) persons working at the Foreign Trade Division .They provide statistical information on foreign trade statistics, by bringing data from the customs offices and from the other uncomputerized  offices at the  Jordanian Customs Department Data are sorted by customs offices individually and by type of trade , Exports , Imports , Re-Exports and by month.

These data are coded, edited, and entered into PCs for data processing. After that a final detailed listing for each of exports, re-exports and imports are extracted using the program Oracle Thus Extracted results are published in monthly reports and stored in  adetailed database and annual CD.

Phases and Working Mechanism Of The External Trade Division

The first stage :

Sorting of the customs declarations:-

1. Guide tariff ( HS), to be issued in the last year of work where all amendments and changes should be taken into consideration .Since the establishment of the Department of Statistics, the Eternal Trade Division has been using the old tariff (BTN) of the Customs Cooperation Council, until the end of the year 1993, when the DoS has switched to use the new customs tariff system (HS) issued by the World Trade Organization since the beginning of the year 1994 till now, leading the situation to be clarified and more detailed of the goods and this also led to the ease in the classification of goods and identify customs duties which led to reduced controversy between the traders and the Customs Department .
2. List of countries.
3. Customs Offices Guide.
4. Guide for Measuring of  Quantities.
5. Guide for Means of Transport and Nationality.
6. Guide for the Currency used.

Sorting of computerized customs data (ASY):-

The programmer in the IT Directorate at the Department, after reciving  the file of External Trade Statistics from the Customs Department transfers the Text File into a program based Oracle.

After selecting the statistical fields from that file, the programmer sorts the information contained therein into exports, imports, re-exports and transit and  by year, month and Customs office.

Second stage:

Checking the data at the Office:-

Checking the data is done at his Division in case of detecting of errors related to the process of coding, or country of origin.

This is done for  the data sent by the offices where data are not computorized. As for the computerized data, they are checked and corrected through linking with the Modem (connected to the main Server at the  Jordanian Customs Department).

Third stage:

Data entry:-

The coded Customs Declarations are entered into PCs by data entry staff using pre-desinged  program (Oracle), where  data listing  is extracted.

For the monthly reports provided by the large companies, (Potash Company, Phosphate Company, the Jordan Petrolium Refinary Company, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Royal Jordanian, , the Indian company,  the National Electricity Company ) these reports will be coded and tabulated and  to be incorporated  with the other data.

Forth Stage :

Checking Lists (manual):

Lists shall be distributed to the auditors according to the type of disclosure (issued, imported, re-exported) provided that the above conditions are met by the auditor.

Fifth Stage :

Amendment to the Lists:

The errors are corrected in the reports from both sources and the extraction of new Lists are checked in the same way and in the case of errors either through the coding mechanism or from the input data and then the extraction of statements for the third time.

At this stage the data must be revised at a high rate where he Checkers re-check and verify the data in them.