Most of the sample surveys conducted by several statistics preparation agencies are multipurpose surveys inquiring into several distinguishing items through a single sample. In a multipurpose sample design, the stratification tends to be very complex since the stratification variables which are both multivariate and heterogeneous must be considered collectively. In this paper we point out an outlier effect in a multivariate stratification to which the K-means clustering method is applied and propose to consider outliers prior to the stratification step. We also show an empirical stratification effect under consideration of outliers through a case study of sample design for The Rural Living Indicators.