Construction of imputation cells for the Canadian Labour Force Survey

This paper discusses in detail issues dealing with the technical aspects of designing and conducting surveys. It is intended for an audience of survey methodologists.

In large-scale surveys, it is almost guaranteed that some level of non-response will occur. Generally, statistical agencies use imputation as a way to treat non-response items. A common preliminary step to imputation is the formation of imputation cells. In this article, the formation of these cells is studied using two methods. The first method is similar to that of Eltinge and Yansaneh (1997) in the case of weighting cells and the second is the method currently used in the Canadian Labour Force Survey. Using Labour Force data, simulation studies are performed to test the impact of the response rate, the response mechanism, and constraints on the quality of the point estimator in both methods.