When Susenas Data is Explored

The statistics corner at Jambi University was inaugurated on August 24, 2022. To maintain the continuity of activities in the statistics corner, the first session of APOTIK-J (Jambi Statistical Corner Activities) was held. This event was held in order to realize a memorandum of understanding for mutual cooperation and collaboration between BPS Jambi Province and Jambi University. Because in the Cooperation Agreement article 3 paragraph (1) g states that the Jambi Province BPS is willing to do knowledge sharing and capacity building related to the use of data for planning and decision making. So, on August 31, 2022 BPS Jambi Province presented the SUSENAS Micro Data Capacity Building activity in the Jambi University library theater room. This activity will involve 20 lecturers under the auspices of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Jambi University. As is well known, SUSENAS is held by BPS for 2 periods, in March and September every year. The March period is for the presentation of data up to the district/city level, while the September period is only up to the provincial level.

The national SUSENAS sample is also quite large. The coverage covers 514 regencies/cities throughout Indonesia. Likewise on a regional scale, the sample of Jambi Province is evenly distributed in 11 districts/cities. In March 2021, 25,345 individuals (6,909 households) were sampled for SUSENAS. This is quite interesting for researchers, without incurring large costs they can obtain large and diverse data.

SUSENAS data is rich in information, that's why SUSENAS is the prima donna of data users. Individual data such as age, gender, marital status, and occupation are included. In addition, SUSENAS also includes per capita expenditure, average population consumption, population information, education, health, fertility, housing, information technology, crime, travel activities and social protection.

The importance of SUSENAS data can also be seen in the RPJMN. Three of the eleven RPJMN macro development targets for 2020-2024 use SUSENAS data, namely HDI, Gini ratio and poverty level. SUSENAS is also a survey that has been carried out by BPS for a long time, so that the data series can be used for time series analysis as well as for methodologies that require long series of data. This activity will introduce SUSENAS to Jambi University lecturers from the introduction of the questionnaire to the concepts and variables in it. This capacity building activity will also provide SUSENAS data processing practices with the SPSS program. Although data users are starting to leave, the SPSS program is still user friendly, its features are still capable and can be relied on as a research processing tool. Data processing practices include also combining SUSENAS data in 1 year (both individual cores, household cores and consumption modules). Likewise with the variable code writing training so that the lecturers understand how to provide the appropriate code with the SUSENAS questionnaire.

This capacity building will be coupled with further activities with the theme of other BPS micro data, such as micro data on Village Potential, micro data on SAKERNAS and micro data on exports and imports. In this case, BPS wants to share data and get closer to its users. BPS wants to show academics and researchers that the micro data it has can be obtained at a rate of zero rupiah. BPS micro data is not just a “treasure” that can only be enjoyed by a few people. However, it can be processed into various variables and indicators that are able to enrich the scientific research of Jambi University. Hopefully the collaboration and synergy in the use of this data will continue between BPS Jambi Province and Jambi University, so that the data held by BPS will be more meaningful and able to support development planning through the hands of academics. (Jambi/Intermediate data)