Data cooking in government surveys

There is a dearth of institutions in Nepal capable of carrying out large-scale research.

The first edition of the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS-I) 1995-96 aimed to create “unique opportunities to assess the poverty situation in the country and carry out many other research works by providing a large database at a single reference point.” Simultaneously, the survey operation aimed to contribute to the capacity building of the then Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in conducting sample surveys. In a sense, it was an experimentation and training opportunity created for the next generation of sample survey researchers. This, therefore, had obvious caveats on the robustness of its outcomes and usability of inferences.