The Government of Barbados committed to executing a Country Assessment of Living Conditions (CALC) in the Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment (ECPA) framework within the scope of the Caribbean Development Bank’s relaunching of this initiative. A critical tool for developing the ECPA was the design and execution of a nationally representative survey of living conditions.

To this end, the Government of Barbados, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, appointed Parstats’ team to design and implement the CALC Survey and conduct a capacity-building program for the Barbados Statistical Service’s personnel. This included training on sampling and survey quality control using cutting-edge methods and informatics tools.

The survey interviewed about 2,900 households and their members in 290 Enumeration Districts. The sample had a stratified two-stage area probability design and was evenly distributed across six monthly replicates. Parstats’ team developed a first-stage sampling frame based on the GIS analysis of satellite imagery. The second-stage frame was built through a household listing operation under stringent centralized real-time supervision using our GIS-based Online Listing Monitoring Platform.

Designed to support evidence-based policymaking, the CALC Survey collected data on living conditions, including health, housing, education, early childhood development, employment, social programs, income, and emigration. It also gathered data on consumption and expenditure, to be used by the Barbados Statistical Service to update the national Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket. Additionally, the survey included an anthropometric module to assess the nutritional status of children.

The survey used Parstats’ Integrated Quality Control System (IQCSTM) throughout the entire project to ensure the highest survey quality standards.