JSLC to Capture Data on a Wide Range of Social Areas

Questioners administrated for the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions (JSLC) will cover a wide range of areas such as food consumption, health, housing, education, and employment.

Survey teams from the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), are currently conducting household-level interviews across the island to gather data for the survey.

In an interview with JIS News, Acting Unit Head in the Labour Market and Welfare Statistics Unit at STATIN, Nicole Allen, explained that the process, which involves 16 modules, begins with household details.

“The first thing that we establish is informed consent. You will give consent for the interview and then we proceed with the questions, and then the next module, which is the household roster.

We’ll get a list of all the individuals who are members of the household and from that, you get the names, their age, sex and who we call the household reference person,” she outlined.

The household reference person is the individual who is the primary decision maker in the household.

Another module is food consumption, which focuses on the types, frequency, source, and cost of food.

“We will be asking you to remember what you ate and not just you, but the members of your household, and where you ate in the past seven days. It does not have to be exact; we just want to get an estimate that is as close as possible because it’s not individual data, it will be aggregated,” Ms. Allen told JIS News.

Modules also cover expenditure on food and non-food items, support received from relatives or social programmes, as well as health system interactions.

“Another module is the health module. We try to find out what people’s interactions are with the health system. We want to know if you visited a hospital or medical practitioner in the past six months, if you have any disabilities, if you have been doing any cancer screening,” Ms. Allen said.

“For the housing module, the first thing we want to do is get a good picture of the housing stock. What are the actual living conditions of people, where do they live? What kind of houses do they live in? Do they have access to a kitchen? Do they have access to a bathroom?” she indicated.

Education and labour force participation are also captured.

“In our education module we try to get an idea of the educational level of the members of the household – what programmes you have completed, if you finished primary school, secondary school, university; if you have done a HEART NSTA Trust programme,” Ms. Allen explained.

Conducted since 1988, the JSLC is Jamaica’s most comprehensive source of social data, informing the development and monitoring of national policies and programmes.

The data is gathered through personal interviews using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) technology on tablets.

Responses are compiled and analysed in aggregate, helping to shape national policies and programmes aimed at improving the lives of Jamaicans.

Data collection for the JSLC began on August 4, 2025, and is expected to run for four months.